Chapter 1: Tourist Trapped: Trust No One
Let's get properly acquainted.
I am Isannah Tannenbaum, a nineteen-year-old college student with no idea of what I want to do with the major I plan to graduate in. You could miss me in a crowd, because I look like any other blonde-haired, green-eyed Pennsylvania Dutch girl. I moved to New York when I was eight, and then later to New Jersey when I was about sixteen. I've been a Jersey girl ever since, and it's as bad as they say.
I found this community college in rural Oregon. It offered a degree in English that I desired, and it was in the middle of nowhere, far from my parents. I obviously didn't tell my parents that this was one of the reasons why I wanted to move across the country on my own. I told them another reason, and this one above all else convinced them to let me go: I was called by God to go there.
That isn't a lie. I really did feel like God wanted me to go there, like He was whispering"I want you here. This is where your life will begin." My parents, being a pastor and a pastor's wife, reluctantly believed me and reluctantly agreed to let me go, on the condition that I would call them every morning and evening, and would e-mail or else video message them as well.
When I told them that the place I was staying at was a place in Gravity Falls, my father protested. But for whatever reason, he let me go. Perhaps it was a matter of thought or a matter of prayer, but all I cared about was that I was going.
I left home with three cell phones, two first aid kits, five copies of emergency phone numbers, several packs of dehydrated food, a life jacket, and even a warning flare.
"Just in case," Dad told me. I was still rolling my eyes after security pulled me over to check my luggage.
With that sort of reception at the airport, I half-dreaded how I would be received in Oregon. With my usual apparel being a cardigan from the 70's and a pair of washed out jeans, I didn't think I would be outright rejected. But I couldn't know what West Coast culture would hold for me.
When I got to Gravity Falls, it was what I was expecting and at the same time not. I mean it was as stereotypical as a sleepy rundown town could get, but when I followed a twin brother and sister out of the bus and formally met Mr. Stanford Pines, I soon found that this place was beyond the bounds of stereotyping nonconformity.
Especially with a name like "Mystery Hack."
It was after the children introduced themselves to Mr. Stanford Pines, their great-uncle, that I decided to introduce myself as well.
"Hi, Mr. Pines."
"Hello and welcome to the Mystery Shack, home to the most amazing and mysterious of … mysteries. What can I interest you in?"
"How about leasing me a room?" I handed him the page that I printed detailing the accommodations he promised tenants of his home. "I can pay the first two months rent, but I'll be searching around for a job so I can keep up the pay for the next month."
After reading over the web page, Mr. Pines held it u saying, "This page is outdated. The rent was raised from two hundred a month to five."
"What?"
"Yeah, I, uh, that is, my handy man never got around to updating it."
This seemed just slightest suspicious, but I was too flustered to really notice. "But I don't have enough to pay. Can't you lower the rent?"
I was answered with a deadpanned face, and a "No."
"Is there a bed 'n breakfast anywhere around?"
"Nearest motel is thirty miles outside of town. Why?"
"I've got to stay somewhere for school. Guess I'd better wait for the next bus – "
"Hey hey now! Wait a minute! I can negotiate. Look, how 'bout I cut you a deal: as long as you work here at the Mystery Shack and keep an eye on these here kids, you will have the privilege of livin' here … and cookin', cleanin', and doin' all the chores that I don't like. If you do a really good job, I might even pay you. I'll even throw in unlimited access to the Mystery Cart, a one of kind vehicle. You're gettin' yourself a deal here. What do ya say?"
I knew from just passing through the main street of the town that this place was a stranger to Day Inns and apartments. And without my own means of transportation, getting anywhere by bus was sure to become expensive. With little choice, I signed a hastily scribbled binding document.
But when I walked inside and saw all the taxidermed animals with mismatched anatomies, runic lettering chiseled into the door frames and walls, and overpriced merchandise, I felt my gut drop.
"You're the first ever leased tenant in the famous Mystery Shack," said Stan with satisfaction as I followed him and the twins inside. "Congratulations!"
I just made the worst mistake of my life,I thought.
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The first few days working in the Mystery Shack were just a little unnerving, to say the least. I mean, I didn't really trust Dipper and Mabel's Great-Uncle Stan, or "Grunkle Stan" as they called him. Not just because he was an obvious conman, but also because of the weird things he put inside the Mystery Shack. How was I to know if some the merchandise or tourist attractions weren't illegal? After I admitted that I was a Christian, he didn't seem too keen on trusting me either. I still had to watch the kids, but he looked at me warily. I could guarantee him the feeling was mutual.
What definitely made things easier, or at least a little less painful, was the fact that the Pines twins were suffering the same as I was, or at least Dipper was. Mabel was his fun-loving, fun-making sister who wore braces and sweaters of all colors, styles, and materials, and when she saw that I had packed toe socks in my luggage and had a stranger taster in clothing that she did, we found a common thread. She just saw nothing dislikeable about the place she and her brother were shipped to for the entire summer. I guess she was also pretty psyched about having me to do makeovers with (notmy favorite activity), to style my hair ( my veryfavorite activity), and to sort of be like an older sister for the summer. She even dubbed me her "Summer Sister."
Dipper was a more serious but awkward guy, who's trademark was a green baseball cap with a star stitched into it. He didn't share her enthusiasm and was having trouble adjusting as much as I was. They both had to work in the Shack like I did, but while she was so cheerful about meeting new people (particularly of the masculine persuasion), he just thought about how unfair it was that his great-uncle was by-passing child labor laws by having his family do work unpaid. He also wasn't thrilled that he was twelve years old and had to be babysat (or that the goat that lived on the grounds of his great uncle's business enjoyed eating everything that belonged to him). I could guarantee him the feeling was mutual.
I don't even need to go into detail about the college I enrolled in, Gravity Falls Community College. It was really just an ancient one-room schoolhouse with about ten local students, and ten professors. I didn't mind my new school except for one blistering detail: the place had no air conditioning.
So, yeah, this was going to be my life for the whole summer. Reading past entries in my diary from between the lens in my glasses, I knew that this was either going to be an outrageous summer semester, or a tediously boring one.
Until the day Dipper found a secret, Mabel got a boyfriend, and I got spanked.
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"He's looking at it! He's looking at it!" Mabel whispered excitedly behind a shelf of Stanford Pines bobble heads ( those are easier on the eyes the real Stan, by the way). I was sweeping the remnants of a broken snow-globe, and out of curiosity decided to see who her latest victim was: another boy who was reading a note she left on a barrel by a shelf. The boy read the note out loud.
"Uh... 'Do you like me?'" and then he read the choices given to him below the question. "'Yes. Definitely. Absolutely?'" He glanced around nervously, and I had to stifle a giggle and a roll of my eyes.
"I rigged it," Mabel said with triumph.
"Mabel," called her brother, who was wiping a jar of eyeballs. "I know you're going through your whole 'boy crazy' phase, but I think you're kinda overdoing it with the crazy part."
"Wha-aaat?" she asked, blowing a cross-eyed raspberry in reply. "Come on, Dipper! This is our first summer away from home. It's my big chance to have an Epic Summer Romance."
"Yeah, but do you need to flirt with everyguy you meet?" he asked.
I personally flashbacked to all the moments she flirted with every boy she met here in town:
-The first poor soul was a customer in the Mystery Shack."My name is Mabel, but you can call me 'The Girl of Your Dreams.' I'm joking!" she shoved the guy she was addressing into the rack of postcards he was looking at, and he collapsed into it while she continued to laugh at her own joke. (I wasn't pleased to have to clean and rearrange that rack.)-
-We were in the park, and there was a boy was sitting on a bench, with a turtle in his lap, when she popped behind him. "Omigosh, you like turtles? I like turtles too! What. Is. Happening. Here?"-
-I don't remember why, but we were in a mattress store, and there was a guy dressed like a medieval prince and standing next to a group of balloons taped to a SALE sign, advertising for the store.
"Come one, come all," he called. "To the Mattress Prince's Kingdom of Savings!"
Mabel appeared between the balloons and whispered to him, "Take me with you." Of course, he screamed.-
"He's right, Mabel, you've got it bad," I said from across the room.
"Mock all you want," said Mabel. "But I got a good feeling about this summer. I wouldn't be surprised if the man of my dreams walked through that door right now." She confidently pointed back to the museum entrance that lead into the gift shop.
Sure enough, through the entrance walked... Grunkle Stan, with some arrow signs under one arm, and a Pitt soda gut, belching, and regretting the heartburn he must have been feeling now. "BLECH! Ah, that's not good!"
"Ohhh, why?" asked a disgusted Mabel, while Dipper and I laughed. "Someone call a doctor," I called, emptying a dust pan of broken glass, "because I think that Stan and Mabel are gonna be sick!"
"Alright alright, look alive people!" commanded Stan. "I need someone to go hammer up these signs in the spooky part of the forest."
"Not it!" replied Dipper, Mabel, and I almost simultaneously.
"Ah... also not it," said another employee with beaver teeth and a heavy figure who was drilling a new shelf into the wall.
"Nobody asked you, Soos," replied the sarcastic manager.
"I know," Soos replied. "And I'm comfortable with that." He took a bite out of a chocolate bar in his hand.
"Wendy," Stan called to the girl behind the cash register. "I need you to put up this sign!"
Wendy, a red-head fifteen-year-old, who had her feet propped up on the registering desk, was reading a magazine. "I would, but I... can't... reach it," she said, not looking up, and pretending to straining to reach the signs.
"I'd fire all of you if I could," remarked Stan. "Alright, let's make it, eenie, meenie, minee... You!" He pointed to Dipper.
"What?" asked Dipper incredulously. "Grunkle Stan, whenever I'm in those woods, I feel like I'm being watched."
"Uhh," sighed Stan. "This again."
"I'm telling you, something weird is going on in this town. Just today my mosquito bites spelled out 'BEWARE.'" He pulled back his short sleeve, revealing the mosquito message.
"That says 'BEWARB,'" his great-uncle replied, still weirded out all the same.
Dipper glanced at the red bites, and scratched them apprehensively.
"Look kid," Stan said, "the whole 'monsters in the forest thing' is just local legend, drummed up by guys like me, to sell merch to guys like that." He gestured to a tourist, who was holding a Stanford Pines bobble head, and looking way too excited about it.
"So quit being so paranoid," was Stan's final word to Dipper, as he tossed him the signs and left him to his task. Dipper sighed and went outside to get to work.
As he exited, I placed the broom and dustpan back in a closet, and Stan came up behind me and asked, "Isannah, you busy?"
I was surprised but recovered. "Um, not at the moment, why?" I was afraid of what task my honesty was gonna land me with.
"Follow Dipper."
"Again? No offense, sir, but I think watching him all the time is what's making him paranoid. Besides, he knows those woods better than I do. Why not let him complete that task without a spy?"
"Because as much as I want the kid to build character at the risk of whatever trauma he may suffer, I don't want him to get lost in the process."
It was the first caring sentence he ever uttered about his family's welfare.
"Also, you're under a contract to watch and protect him, so get to it."
I resigned to the task, then Mabel said. "I'll help. I can track Dipper like a bloodhound can track a trail of blood."
"That's comforting," I replied, grossed out. Then Mabel paused as another guy stepped into the gift shop.
"But first, I've got a heart to steal." She headed in the poor boy's direction.
I sighed and went outside, following the path that Dipper took, into the spooky part of the forest.
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The sky was a bleak color, and the pines swayed ominously. Dipper morosely hammered signs on the surrounding trees leading to the Shack.
"Ugh, Grunkle Stan," muttered Dipper, hammering another nail into a tree trunk. "Nobody ever believes anything I say." He hung a sign advertising the Mystery Shack on the nail, and sullenly walk to another one.
He pounded a nail on a moldy tree trunk, but was surprised when the hammer on the nail cause the trunk to make a strange sound. A sound like a metallic echo. He then removed the nail, and pressing his ear to the trunk, tapped the hammer on the trunk several times, listening to the sound. He felt the surface of the trunk, and found it to be dusty and smooth, and pulled back what seemed to be the edge of bark, but instead found it to be a tiny door, like that of a locker. Behind the door were cobwebs, and a strange rusty computing device, with buttons, switches, and a cracked screen. Dipper glanced around, making sure that no one was in sight. He then tried moving one of the switches, and then tried the other. Behind him, a well hidden door in the ground opened up. He turned around, and walked up to it.
"What the-?" He looked in the hole in the ground. Inside, dressed in cobwebs and crawling with millipedes, was a dusty book. Dipper removed the book from inside, blew the dust off the cover, and saw on the cover a golden six fingered hand with a "3" pressed in the palm.
He placed the book on the ground, making furtive glances over his shoulder, and opened the book. On the inside of the cover, he saw the owner of the book had been blotted out, and found a monocle, but placed it back inside, and flipped to the first page, covered in cursive writing. The date was marked June 18th. He read:
"'It's hard to believe it's been six years since I began studying the strange and wondrous secrets of Gravity Falls, Oregon." He flipped the page, and found the other page with a photo and drawing of eyes and something about "floating eyeballs," while the page next to it was about giant vampire bats. He flipped to another page which featured information about gnomes, and still another about "cursed doors."
"What is all this?" he asked himself, flipping page after page. "'Unfortunately my suspicions have been confirmed,'" he read. "I'm being watched. I must hide this book before He finds it. Remember- in Gravity Falls, there is no one you can trust.'" Written underneath in large print was the repeated message: TRUST NO ONE!
Dipper closed the book. "'No one you can trust,'" he quoted thoughtfully.
"HELLO!" shouted Mabel and I cheerfully behind him on a rotten log. Dipper gasped in surprise, fumbled the book in his hands, and caught and grasped it tightly. Mabel caught up with me on the trail a half hour later, and we both plotted to scare him in the most natural way possible. I couldn't help myself. The sister in me loves causing trouble for brothers.
"Whatcha reading? Some nerd thing?" asked his sister.
"Uh-uh," Dipper turned to face us, hiding the book behind him. "It's nothing!"
"'Uh-uh, it's nothing,'" she mimicked him, and laughed. "Are you actually not gonna show us?"
"We're not gonna stop asking until you do," I warned.
"Uh," Dipper glanced the goat who used to live in his room. It was chewing on a corner of the book binding. "Let's go somewhere private."
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"It's amazing!" exclaimed Dipper. "Grunkle Stan said I was being paranoid, but according to this book, Gravity Falls has this secret dark side."
"Whoa," replied his sister, awed. "Shut. UP." She shoved the book in fake disbelief.
We were in the living room on the other side of the Mystery Shack that was our residence, and while I was sipping a bottle of water, Dipper was exposing his discovery of the journal in the woods.
"And get this!" he continued. "After a certain point, the pages just stop, like the guy who was writing it mysteriously disappeared."
"This is some mad crazy stuff, dude," I commented. "Say, this is book could help me with my education."
"What do you mean?" asked Dipper, closing the book.
"Well, I have an essay to write for my history class, and if this book mentions anything pertaining to the history of this town, then I could-"
"No! You can't tell anyone about this book," answered Dipper.
"Why not?" I asked.
"Iz, you have to understand, this is top secret. The author of this book said 'In Gravity Falls, there's no one you can trust.' We can't risk that the wrong person might try to get this book from us."
"Don't worry, I won't tell a living soul," I assured Dipper. "I won't even write about it in my journal. My mind is a closed book."
The doorbell rang. "Who's that?" asked Dipper. We never got visitors to the actual house part of the Shack.
"Well, time to spill the beans," said Mabel from her position on the arm of an easy chair. She reached her finger, said "Poke," and tipped over an empty bean can on the dinosaur skull that served as a TV table. "Beans."
Typical Mabel, I thought.
"This girl's got a date," she told us. "Whoo whoo!" She fell back on the couch with her braced smile beaming with self satisfaction.
"Let me get this straight," replied her brother with a "You-gotta-be-kidding-me" look on his face, "In the half hour I was gone, you already found a boyfriend?"
"What can I say?" replied Mabel, retracting back onto the arm of the easy chair. "I guess I'm just irresistible."
"Please assure me that he isn't some shady character from a suspicious side of town," I begged her. The doorbell rang again and again.
"Oh! Coming!" she called, rushing to answer the door. As she left, Dipper sat in the chair himself, and reopened the journal. I took another swig from my water bottle, and contemplated this new situation. I personally didn't believe that kids Mabel's age should be dating. Nothing against twelve-year-olds, but at that age, no one is mature enough to handle a boy/girlfriend relationship.
"What cha reading there, Slick?" asked Grunkle Stan, who happened to walk by, drinking yet another Pitt soda can.
Dipper jumped at his sudden appearance. "Oh! I was just"-he stuffed the book under a pillow on the chair, and pulled a magazine lying on the dinosaur skull- "catching up on, uh..." He flipped the magazine to the cover page. "'Gold Chains for Old Men Magazine?'"
"That's a good issue," his great-uncle remarked. While Stan took a sip of his can, and Dipper flipped open the magazine, the three of us heard Mabel call "Heeeeeey, Family!" and turned towards the door way where she stood. I assumed she meant me as well, what being her "Summer Sister" and all.
"Say 'hello' to my new boyfriend!" she said. His back was turned to us, but he turned to face us upon introduction. I stared in shock, and my wrist slacked and water from my bottle spilled on the floor. He was a creepy hoodie with legs, half his deathly pale face shrouded in the shadow of his hood and his hair, and a voice that sounded too raspy for even a pubescent boy to possess. The left shoulder of his hoodie was torn, and a stick seemed to grow from the top of his hood like an antler. He struck me (and no doubt everyone else in the room) as somehow simply unnatural.
"'Sup?" he asked causally.
"Hey," replied Dipper uneasily.
"How's it hangin'?" replied Stan.
"You've got a stick in your head," was all I could think to say.
Dipper and Stan looked at me.
"You might want to get that checked, just saying." I just realized I had tipped my whole bottle on the floor, and was too self-conscience to say anything more.
"We met at the cemetery," Mabel explained. She rubbed her hand on his sleeve. "He's so deep. Ooo, little muscle there," she remarked in surprise. She pinched his sleeve, and got bashful. "What a surprise." Her boyfriend looked bored and somewhat annoyed.
I was about to ask what Mabel was doing in the cemetery – an obviously suspicious side of town – in the first place, but her brother beat me to the punch. "Soooo, what's your name?" asked Dipper, giving him a scrutinizing look. Stan just sipped his soda.
"Uh... normal... MAN!" he replied with a shifty look in his face.
"He's mean Norman," explained Mabel. She was totally enthralled, even while he continued to appear annoyed.
"Are you bleeding, Norman?" asked Dipper, pointing to Norman's face. Sure enough, something red was oozing and dripping off his cheek.
Norman was unnerved. "It's jam," he replied.
Mabel gasped. "I lovejam!" she exclaimed, giving him a shove. "Look. At. This!" She gestured between the two of them.
So that's how you're compatible, I remarked to myself, rolling my eyes. By now, Dipper was off the chair, clearly unhappy with the shady character who Mabel picked to be her date. Stan took his place on the couch, taking up the magazine of gold chains. Apparently that was more interesting to him.
"So, you wanna go, hold hands or, whatever?" Norman asked Mabel.
"Oh, oh my goodness," remarked Mabel, giddy with happiness. "Don't wait up!" she called to us, hurrying out of the door frame in the direction of the front door. Her boyfriend signaled "See ya around" to me and Dipper, then staggering, bumped and slumped his way through the hall to the front door. I heard several fragile objects shatter as they impacted the ground.
Dipper and I looked at each other, both thinking the same thing: something wasn't right about "Norman."
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I followed Dipper upstairs to an unused room in the attic, mostly empty except for a window seat and the red window pane shaped like the "all seeing eye." That window gave me the heebie-jeebies, but I followed Dipper in anyway, and read over his shoulder. He decided to consult the journal. If there was anything that could help us figure out a character like Norman in Gravity Falls, he figured that the journal could point us in the right direction. I wasn't so positive the book would have anything about "normal men" in it's pages, but looked over Dipper's shoulder all the same.
He found a drawn picture of a decomposing figure rising from a grave, and read: "'Known for their pale skin and bad attitudes, these creatures are often mistaken for... teenagers!'" He exclaimed.
I read the rest of the passage. "'Beware Gravity Falls' nefarious...'"
We gasped. The drawn figure looked exactly like Norman!
"Zombie!" yelled Dipper. His voice echoed throughout the rafters of the house.
In a bathroom, Stan heard the exclamation. "Somebody say 'crombie?'" he asked, puzzled. "What is that, crombie? It's not even a word." He focused his attention on his reflection. "You're losing your mind."
Meanwhile, back in the attic room, Dipper and I heard a sound like "unnhh" from outside, and looked out the window. On a picnic table outside the Mystery Shack, sat Mabel, while Norman was slowly approaching her, arms outstretched in the typical zombie pose. The undead sounds were coming from him.
"I like you," said Mabel in complete innocence as the apparent danger approached her face.
"Oh no!" I yelled.
"Mabel!" Dipper screamed.
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