Ghost Consultant

Chapter 2: The Call

(September 24, 2016)

"What's up, Broseph?" Mabel asked as she, coming down the stairs, met Dipper, coming up.

"Nothing, just have to do some stuff," he said, dodging Tripper, who always liked to greet people with a doggy dance, whether he was on the stairs or on level ground.

Mabel reached down and hooked her finger in the dog's collar to let Dipper past. "OK, don't tell me, then. But me, I'm gonna let Tripper out and then have breakfast and—"

"Fine, fine," Dipper said.

"—and then go down the street and do some stuff with Billy," she finished. "We made a date to do something, but we didn't decide what. Maybe go to the park and let him play on the playground."

Dipper hadn't paused until she said that. At the top of the stair, he froze with his hand on the rail. "Uh—Mabel, we need to talk about Billy," he said. "Only—not right now, OK?"

She looked up from the bottom of the stairs. She was wearing one of her sweaters, a morning-sky blue one with a golden smiling sun appliqué. Tripper, eager to get out into the backyard, danced around her feet and whined. Mabel frowned at Dipper. "What? Why? What aren't you telling me? Is he in trouble?"

"Not exactly," Dipper said. "Look, wait until we have time to go into it." Dang it, Mabel, can't you notice how the kid looks at you? He's head over heels in puppy love!

Mabel shrugged and gave into Tripper's urging, going with him out of sight, down the hall toward the back door.

Dipper hesitated at the top of the stairs. She'll have to do something about this. Billy's just at that age when he starts to notice girls as girls. She'll have to let him down gently somehow.

However, that called for delicate handling. Dipper remembered all too well how at twelve, he'd fallen so hard for Wendy and how she had gently rejected his romantic interest but had wanted to stay friends . . . and how the way that all finally worked out was a one-in-a-million chance.

He couldn't see that happening now. For one thing, Billy was nowhere near as mature for his age as Dipper had been (Dipper assured himself). And since he happened to be a human incarnation of an eldritch horror without even knowing that, it was important to manage things so he didn't get all resentful and angry—the way Li'l Gideon had been.

Maybe I can get Wendy to have a talk with her.

Dipper went back to his bedroom and—very unusually for him—locked the door. He glanced out the back window and saw Mabel scooping up what Tripper had just deposited on the lawn—Dad had come home with a device that let you put the baggie on a kind of plastic claw. The claw was on the end of a barrel that had a trigger and handle on the other end. It not only retrieved the mess, but sealed it in the baggie, so you didn't have to touch anything, really. Mabel liked it so much that she kept cheerleading for Tripper to poop, even when the dog obviously was not in the mood.

Now down in the back yard, she put the baggie in another bag and then found Tripper's favorite ball and started to play fetch with him. The brown dog went bounding joyously in pursuit of the high-bouncing prey

OK, Mabel was going to be busy for a while with Tripper and with breakfast and then with Billy. Mom and Dad had spoken of no errands for Dipper to run. He lay back on his bed and punched in Eloise's number. It was a little past eight here, so it would be a little past ten in Minnesota—

"Hi, Dipper!"

He couldn't help smiling at her warm tone. "Hi, Eloise. Uh, I got your text. What's the trouble?"

"Whoa," she said, laughing. "Let's catch up a little first. How's school?"

He shrugged, though they weren't face-timing and she couldn't see that. "Uh, you know. Harder classes, but I can handle them. Oh, this year I'm captain of the Varsity track team—"

Her voice rose in what sounded like pleased surprise: "No kidding? That's awesome!"

Flustered, Dipper said, "Well, you know, it's extra work and all. But it's, yeah, it kinda made me feel good. We, you know, we have some good people on the team this year. Anyhow, how are things with you? School OK?"

"Mostly," she said. "But that's why I called you. You're the only person in the world I can say this to straight out: I think there's probably a ghost loose in the school. Oh, wait, before we start on all that, let me get a pen and paper . . . OK, I forgot the name of the college you said you'd already been accepted for."

"Uh, it's Western Alliance University," Dipper said, surprised. "Its mailing address is Crescent City, but it's really a little east of there. Pretty area, Nearly rural. And it's just three miles from Olmsted, which is where Mabel's going to get her art degree."

"Crescent City," Eloise said. "California, right?"

Oh, right, a girl from Minnesota wouldn't know that. Dipper replied, "Yeah, but it's way up north from here. California's kind of a long state, you know. Piedmont's about in the middle—well, you know, because you've been to San Jose, and that's not far from us. But Western Alliance is, I guess, like 350 miles north of us? Something like that, anyhow. Close to the Oregon border. Uh, why?"

"I'm getting my college applications out," Eloise said in a way that Dipper thought was a shade too casual. "I thought I might try one or two schools in California. I'm pretty tired of Minnesota winters. What are you majoring in?"

Dipper laughed. "For a change, that's something I haven't fully planned out. I know whatever my degree will be, there'll be an emphasis in the sciences, but I want to minor in video production and photography. That's why I chose Western. See, it was originally CCC State, but it merged with two other colleges back in the 1980s, so it's a university now and since it's kind of a conglomeration of three different colleges, it has a huge range of majors to choose from. It has a good reputation and some really prestigious teachers—I'm not trying to sell you on it, though."

Eloise laughed. "The really important question now. How close to the beach is it?"

Dipper blinked. "Um, I really don't know. Few miles, I guess. I have to tell you, though, that far north, the ocean stays pretty cold! Like fifty degrees for most of the year."

"That doesn't matter," she said. "I just loved seeing the Pacific. Anyway. Let me tell you about the stuff that's happening in our school."

She talked at some length, the story taking about forty minutes. Dipper put her on speaker and sat at his desk making notes. "Has it hurt anybody?" he asked.

"No, but it only shows up at night. So far, anyway. Mr. Kamfer thinks that most of the stuff that's happened is just accidental, like the girls' room deal, and the really weird stuff, like the lockers being opened—that was on the security video I told you about—he says is caused by a gang of vandals."

Dipper rapidly clicked his pen. "Mm. Have you seen the video?"

"No, but Mrs. Patel—she's a math teacher who loves to get off the topic—saw it and described it to my class. She doesn't think anybody could do all that stuff with fishing line or anything."

"OK," Dipper said, nervously continuing his pen-clicking. "From what you've told me, assuming it is some kind of ghost, it's definitely malicious. A lot of this sounds like high-level poltergeist activity. Have there been any manifestations?"

"That's . . . kind of weird," Eloise said. "Nothing shows up on the videos, but people around school are talking about what a football player claims he saw. This happened just last week, Tuesday I think."

"Tell me about it," Dipper said, his pen poised.

As Eloise said, it wasn't all that much of a story, really. Cutting it to the bone, football season had begun, and on Tuesday afternoon the team had been out on the field practicing after school. For one reason or another, they finished very late, around seven p.m., as the sun was setting. And then one guy, Tanner Berlinger, remembered he'd left his math book in his locker and needed it because homework was due. He asked the coach to let him go in and get it, so the coach had unlocked the school's back door.

Tanner went in and a few minutes later came running out without his textbook and scared to death. The coach walked back in with him, he got the book, and he ran back out again. The coach turned out the lights and locked the outer door. He hadn't seen a thing.

But Tanner . . .

He told some of the guys (they laughed at him) and then he told his girlfriend, Janna, and she told Eloise and some other girls.

Tanner said he had to walk down the hall, past the cafeteria, and then turn left down a long hall leading past the library, to get to his locker. Coach had turned on the overhead lights in both hallways, but he waited at the outside door.

Tanner had got to the lunchroom door when the lights on that hall all went out. After a few seconds, they came back on. They were fluorescents, and they flickered. Tanner thought Coach was messing with him.

He'd stopped when the lights went out—the hall wasn't totally dark, but it was hard to see without the lights on—and when he got to the spot where the rows of lockers began, he saw someone standing in the hall ahead.

"He thinks it was a girl," Janna had said in a whisper. "She was wearing some old-fashioned clothes and had long straight black hair that hung down over her eyes, and she was standing with her arms dangling and her head down, like she was looking at the ground."

Then the lights flickered off and on again. And the girl was gone.

Tanner started to get scared, but he was close to his locker.

He fumbled the dial a couple of times—new locks this year, he was having trouble remembering the combination—but finally got it right, opened the locker, and started to reach for the math book.

The lights went out, and he froze. They stayed out for ten, fifteen seconds. Then they came back on.

Tanner closed the locker door to look back the way he had come to see if the cross hall lights down past the lunchroom were still on.

And there she stood, her face ten inches away from his.

And the lights went out.

"They came on again," Eloise told Dipper, "and she wasn't there, but Tanner was so scared he peed his pants. He went running out, and Coach stopped him and wanted to know where his book was, and Tanner was, I guess, babbling.

Coach grabbed his arm and marched him back into the school and up to his locker—door was still hanging open—and he got the book and Coach made Tanner close and lock the locker again and they went out. Tanner was wearing black jeans and they didn't show the wet, but the coach noticed some dribbles and thought the sprinkler system pipe might be leaking. Tanner didn't tell him the truth. Anyway, they got out and nothing else happened."

Dipper was pen-clicking again as he thought."Did Tanner tell any of the teachers?"

"I don't think so," Eloise said. "Next day he told some of the guys on the team and they made fun of him. But Janna says he's really scared."

"What did he say the figure looked like?"

"That's the strange thing," Eloise said. "He told Janna that he couldn't even describe how horrible it was up close, looking through its hanging hair at him and grinning. There was something real wrong with those eyes staring through the hair, he said. It wasn't human, he said. Not like a live human, anyhow."

"He's still scared?"

"Oh, yeah—he emptied out his locker and now he's carrying a backpack around with everything in it, all his books and stuff. He says he'll never use that locker again."

"Wow," Dipper said. "The apparition must have been pretty bad."

"Wait, I haven't told you the rest of it," Eloise said. She paused for some time. "Janna made the three girls she told this to swear not to tell anybody else, but you're a special case, OK?"

"I don't even know any of them," Dipper pointed out. "And I'm trying to help you get to the bottom of this, so yeah. You can tell me."

He heard her take a deep breath. "Tanner found something inside his math book that night when he started doing his homework. It was a folded piece of just regular old notebook paper. He knew he hadn't put it in there. When he unfolded it, he read a note that he told Janna he was pretty sure was written in dried blood. He let her look at it, and she says it made her feel horrible. Like somebody walking over her grave, she told me."

Dipper felt a prickling on the back of his neck. "What did it say?"

Eloise said, "Rusty-red ink, looking crusted. No punctuation. All caps. It read, I'll come for you my love."