Rumbelows

(July 13-16, 2016)


2

Ford had explained to them that the terrible smell inside the Outhouse of Mystery was purposely designed to prevent people from using it as, well, an outdoor toilet. It didn't always work—Grunkle Stan had been known to use the outhouse for its original purpose, and even Dipper had ducked into it a couple of times when he really, really needed to go. It was bearable, as long as you left the door cracked—which kind of defeated the purpose of an outhouse door, but whatever.

"Hold your breath," Dipper advised Mabel.

They went inside, he closed the door, and then he engaged the elevator function. They had the sensation of movement—not necessarily downward movement, just the sense that somehow they were moving in some direction—and then the door latch popped. Dipper turned off his light, leaving them in complete darkness, and he took a breath. The smell was just earthy, not sulfuric, so he thought they'd probably arrived. "I'll check," he whispered.

Cautiously, he pushed the door open, and the constant dim orange light of the Crawlspace* leaked in—but none of the mutter and chatter he'd expected. He opened the door and Mabel joined him. "Where's all the monsters?" she whispered.

He shook his head. They had to creep around a corner to get a view of the bizarre bazaar. The shops and stands all stood as Dipper remembered them, crammed with goods and remarkably uncrammed with customers or shopkeepers. The arms dealer was nowhere in sight, though his barrels of human and not so human appendages waved at them. The Give a Damn/Take a Damn booth, where the so-called Gnome King** sold curses and curse removers, stood abandoned, the door hanging open as if the proprietor had left too hurriedly even to slam it behind him.

"Looks like they left," Dipper said.

"Looks like they ran," Mabel corrected. "Look around, Broseph."

He saw what his sister meant. Scattered about, shopping bags and baskets lay on the ground, their contents spilled, or in some cases, creeping away. "Something . . . must have scared them away," he said.

"What could scare monsters?" Mabel whispered.

"Um . . . maybe Toby Determined visited?"

Mabel snorted. "Good one, Brobro. But kinda mean for you."

"Yeah. I guess I'm sort of on edge," Dipper admitted. "Well, as long as we're here, let's look around."

Oddly, they didn't find anyone, human or otherwise. However, on the ledge where the Hand Witch sometimes crouched, they spotted her guard raven. He regarded them with beady eyes.

"Hi," Mabel said, waving. "Mabel Pines, I visit the Hand Witch in her cave now and then, you remember me."

The raven did not say—wait for it—"Nevermore." It did say "So?"

"Um, so I was wondering, what happened here?"

"Everybody left," the bird said.

"Why?" Dipper asked.

"To go somewhere else."

"But what caused them to want to go somewhere else?" Mabel asked.

"They changed their minds about staying here."

That was the trouble with ravens. By the time you could get a straight answer out of one, you were raving yourself.

They told the bird goodbye and poked around. The Crawlspace was a broad honeycomb of a cavern, with niches and dark pockets and unexpected winding passages. "We're not going in any of those," Dipper said. "It would be too easy to get hopelessly lost."

"OK," Mabel said. "So what do we do? Just turn around and go home?" She wiggled her fingers. "Or do a little recreational looting, hmmm?"

"No looting," Dipper said firmly. "You don't want to get the maul chops on our tails."**

"I don't think any of them are still here."

"Still," Dipper said.

They visited the former lair of Mr. What's-His-Face, a demon who specialized in stealing faces—once he had briefly taken both Mabel's and Dipper's. "Former" fit the situation, since Mr. What's-His-Face apparently no longer held the lease on the space—it was now a frame shop, specializing in pinning the blame for crimes ranging from petty to capital on completely innocent people or other sentient creatures.

However, it was as deserted as everywhere else in the strange realm. Dipper and Mabel were on the verge of giving up and returning to the surface when Mabel tilted her head. "I hear . . . something," she said.

Dipper listened. "I don't."

"This way, I think." She led the way to a branch of the Underground River Bank—well, even monsters and demons had to have some medium of exchange if they were doing business—and they went inside. No guards, no tellers—but now Dipper could hear a faint pounding sound.

They followed it and found themselves standing outside the closed metal door of a vault. A number pad beside the chrome handle evidently worked the lock. It had no numbers on the keys, but spiky marks. "What the heck?" Mabel asked.

"Runes," Dipper said. "Futhark runes. It's OK, I can read them."

"Yeah, you would know how to do that." Mabel tapped on the door. "Hey! Is anybody in there?"

"Yah!" the desperate word came back faint and muffled. "Help! I am running out of air!"

Mabel leaned close to the door to shout, "If we let you out, you won't hurt us, will you?"

"Nein! Just don't eat me!"

Dipper yelled, "I don't think you need to worry about that. Uh—what's the combination?"

"Touch these runes as I tell you in order. Each vill glow. Touch the next one before the last one goes out, OK?"

"OK. Ready."

"Wunjo! Ansuz! Berkana! Ansuz! Sowulo! Hagalaz! Now open!"

Dipper punched the buttons in order, they lit up red, and then all turned green, the combination was complete, and he pushed on the handle. He and Mabel tugged, and the great iron door swung open. Somebody pushed from inside—

Like a cannonball, a Gnome shot out of the vault. Except he wasn't dressed in the traditional overalls and red hat, but in a pin-striped black suit, white shirt with gold tie, and he wore thick gold-rimmed spectacles. He looked disheveled and frightened."Whoo! Dot vas a close call—vait, vait, you are mortals? How so?"

"I think," Mabel said, "the phrase you're groping for is 'Thank you!'"

"Hmm? Yah, yah, thanks. But seeing humans here—ach! Has it gone?"

"What?" Dipper asked.

The Gnome adjusted his spectacles and looked around fearfully. "The monster!" he said.

Mabel said, "You sound . . . different. You're not from the Gravity Falls Gnome colony, are you?"

"Me? Nein, I come from Switzerland. I am a Swiss Gnome, the director of this branch bank, yah? Vere are all the peoples?"

"They seem to have left in a hurry," Dipper said.

"Or—the monster ate them!"

"You keep saying 'monster,'" Mabel pointed out. "What monster do you—whoa!"

The ground shook. Here and there, stalactites broke off and crashed to the surface. Dipper nearly lost his footing. As an earthquake, the phenomenon would have been most impressive.

But—

"DOT monster!" screamed the hapless Swiss Gnome.


*Like every underground space in every fantasy you've ever read about or seen on screen, the Crawlspace produced its own eldritch light. This may have been natural phosphorescence, luminous fungi, or simply narrative convention.


**The Gnome King was a fraud. At least the title was. Gnomes are ruled by a Queen and never recognize kings. I mean, they'd walk right past this guy in the street and ask each other, "Who was that? Looked sort of familiar, but . . . ." Anyway, he was a Gnome named, it is believed, Mort. To be fair, he was a Gnome Gnwizard who had studied the occult and who probably did have some real skill at cursing or uncursing objects and people. The ability was real. The King stuff was just advertising.


***Maul chops are the Crawlspace's security guards. They are roughly the same as human mall cops. Extremely roughly.