True to form, Dipper prepared well for the evening's ghost exploration, starting with dragging Mabel with him down to the library to search for information one Henry Hamilton-Smythe minor. The obituary was easy to find, but no matter how much they searched the newspapers from the days before the obituary, the twins were unable to find any mention of how Henry died. The only thing the obituary could tell them was the boy passed away "suddenly" at the age of eight. Dipper regretted not asking Pacifica about the cause of Henry's death right away. That might be helpful in figuring out why he haunted her.

Neither of them had ever been to Pacifica's house before, but they had no problem finding it, let alone identifying it. In such a small town, it stood out, even amongst the other homes in the neighbourhood that one might tenatively call the Beverly Hills of Gravity Falls. The fancy colonial-styled Northwest Manor was rising slightly above its neighbours, and Dipper was surprised to bee greeted by Pacifica herself when he rang the doorbell, rather than some butler. Possibly, she was too embarrassed to let anyone see who her visitors were. The fact that she didn't even take them to see her parents seemed to confirm this.

"Pacifica?", he asked as they moved along a long corridor towards a staircase, "Are your parents okay with you having visitors over this late?"

"Sure, I just told them you're here for a sleepover."

"Yay, sleepover!" Mabel exclaimed. "So what are we gonna do first? Make popcorn? Watch a movie? Or tell ghost stor...uh, scratch that, guess"

"Don't get too excited, Miss Sunshine." Pacifica muttered. "I told them that just to justify having guests here at bedtime. I'm getting ready to go to bed, you're not. Dipper, turn around!", she barked. "I need to change."

"No problem" he growled as he turned and looked at the wall. "But you could say please."

"You guys are only here to look into this little problem." Pacifica explained as she changed into a nightgown behind Dipper's back and, ignoring his last remark. "As soon as you fixed it, you can go right home. Okay, you can turn around again."

The green silk nightgown that Pacifica was currently wearing was stunning enough to make Dipper forget what he wanted to say, if only for a fraction of a second.

"As soon as we've fixed this?", he snapped. "Pacifica, we're not pest exterminators. There's no guarantee that we can make this little problem of yours go away just like –"

Pacifica slammed the bathroom door behind her, which Dipper assumed was her less than subtle way of saying "Yeah, whatever." He sat down on a stool, muttering under his breath, when he suddenly became aware of Mabel moving towards the…

"Mabel, what do you think you're doing?" he whispered to his sister. "Don't touch that thing!"

"I just wanted to hear what it sounded like", she defended herself, and added with a grin: "Besides, it might freak Pacifica out if it suddenly started playing while she's at the bathroom."

"Tempting" Dipper admitted. "But we're gonna do this properly. Besides, if you start it now, you might scare away the ghost."

"So you think there's a ghost?"

"What else could it be?"

"Maybe she's setting us up for a prank."

"Well, that…" Dipper hesitated. "Wait a minute, that's the sort of thing I'm supposed to think of. "

"Yeah, funny that." Mabel remarked. "So why do you think she's sincere?"

"For one thing, she seemed very reluctant to ask for our help. If she was playing a prank, she probably would've faked friendliness to lure us into a false sense of security. And besides, she doesn't seem to be setting us in a potentially embarrassing situation."

A nearly overwhelming smell of fluoride rinse flowed out as the bathroom door opened abruptly.

"Oh hi, Pacifica, we were just talking about you." Mabel smiled.

"Are you ready?" she asked Dipper…or at least she was looking only at him as she said it. Then she proceeded to swagger across the floor without waiting for an answer.

"I have to warn you." Dipper commented as he and Mabel got up and followed her. "This is a longshot anyway. I mean, Henry doesn't appear every night, does he? What are the odds of him appearing two nights in a…"

Dipper interrupted himself as he noticed a faint tune:

Old King Cole was a merry old soul,

And a merry old soul was he.

So he called for his pipe,

And he called got his bowl,

And he called for his fiddlers three.

All three looked at the direction of the musical box.

"Looks like the odds are increasing." Mabel remarked, only to be hushed by both her brother and Pacifica.

Noticing that even the clock on the nearby mantelpiece seemed to go slower, Dipper studied the musical box from which the sound was clearly coming. He was filled with a fearful joy as the apparition of a young boy slowly materialized before their eyes. As far as he could tell, the kid has dark brown hair and was rather short for an eight-year old. He had a button nose, and his features seemed fairly handsome. His voice, however, although it was low and hesitant, sounded eerily adult as it said:

"And I want…and I feel…and I know…and I touch…"

The figure moved towards Pacifica, who backed away in fear.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Mabel remarked:

"You want to play croquet now, Pacifica?"

"What kind of random nonsense are you spouting now, Mab –" her expression stiffened. "Wait!" the blonde continued after a moment's hesitation, "Did you say…croquet?"

Slowly, Pacifica's gaze moved downwards. She yelped as she noticed that for some reason, she was holding a croquet mallet. Desperately, she tried to let go of it, only to find that it was stuck to her.

"Oh gross, look at Henry now!" Mabel pointed.

All three tweens looked in the direction of the dead boy. Whereas he had looked rather clean and healthy a moment ago, his face was now covered in blood stains, and his head was cracked open. Yet he was still smiling as he kept looking at Pacifica, seemingly not even noticing Dipper and Mabel's presence. Amazingly, Pacifica didn't scream at the sight of blood dripping from her ex-boyfriend's cracked open skull. Not until she looked down at her mallet again, and found that it was covered with blood as well. Then she let out a shriek of unrestrained horror.

To be continued