The Mabel Who Knew Too Much
Chapter 2: The Birdz
Mabel's Investigation Log: Stardate Today, 13030 PM, DST. I totally don't know what that means.
After Wendy told me of her strange telephone conversation with Mr. Unknown, I called Pacifica to make sure she was OK, and she was, but she and her mom were in a shoe store and Pacifica spent twelve hours and nine minutes describing all the shoes she was looking at. OK, maybe it wasn't that long, but it sure felt like it.
So anyway, it didn't look like this line of investigation was going anywhere, so I had a post-lunch snack of Gummy Armadillos and root beer and then took a big picnic basket with some bologna and cheese sandwiches, boiled eggs, and soda out into the woods because the Sev'ral Timez guys are still hanging around out there. I invited Dipper to come along, too, but he said, "Can't stand their music. I'll hang out with Wendy."
Methinks they doth hang out a lot-eth! Match in the making?
Anyway, the Sev'ral Timez guys came scampering when I called them, and they really enjoyed their lunch (they tell me they usually forage in garbage cans and have to fight with McGucket's ex-wife sometimes—she's a raccoon—so they're grateful for the occasional sandwiches and sodas. I won't repeat the crude jokes they made about the way the boiled eggs smelled, but they were funny).
I also carried scissors, disposable razors, moisturizer, deodorant, and soap, 'cause they get pretty hairy and smelly out in the woods all the time. But they no longer sleep out in the wild. They found the Multibear's cave and he let them move in with him, because he is the only ones of his kinds and they get lonely. That doesn't look right, but like I told Mrs. Beeders in English class last year, pronouns are confusing when you're writing about a bear with three bodies and eight heads.
Oh, by the way, the heads have learned to harmonize, and Sev'ral Timez have written a bunch of new songs that the Multibear can join in on: "It's Cold in the Cave of Your Heart, Girl," "Heads Up for Love," and "Snuggling into Your Fur." They sang a few of these for me. Yeah . . . . Creeped me out.
Anywho, after I trimmed their hair and they had shaved, my Sev'ral Timez boys had a nice bath in a swimming hole along Crooked Creek, and I totally watched them. Man, if I could sell tickets to the girls in town—but that would be wrong.
The guys were a little shy at first, but I explained that I had learned all about male anatomy from a book Grunkle Stan read to me (long story short, look out for the pituitary gland) and from spending some time in Dipper's bod. Then they toweled off and I showed them how to snap towels at each other's butts, so they're getting to be more and more civilized, just like normal boys.
But then after they had dressed again, Chubby Z. said, "Yo, Mabel girl, we thank you most kindly for the food and the makeovers, girl, but answer us a question: What is with these cray-cray birdies today?"
"What birdies?" I asked.
Deep Chris said, "Like, all the fowls of the forest, girl. As of this morning, they congregate and conglobulate in ways most bewildering."
"I don't know what you mean."
Greggy C. said, "C'mon, my brothers, let us show the young lady."
So they took me up onto a hill where I guess Manly Dan had chopped down most of the trees, so the seedlings were only knee-high, and we could look out far across the valley. Sure enough, there was like a dark cloud of birds in the sky, just circling and circling over one particular spot, miles away. From that distance it looked ominous, almost like a funnel cloud.
That reminds me of funnel cake! That reminds me of the fair Grunkle Stan threw when I won Waddles! Waddles!
And that makes me sad, 'cause Mom says Waddles absolutely has to stay here when we go back home for school. He's too big for the house, and the neighbors complain when he's out in the yard, though he looks a whole lot handsomer than Mr. Momphreys next door when he plunges his fat hairy old bod into their hot tub, which I can totally see over the privacy fence, plain as day, when I climb up onto the roof of our house with binoculars.
But anyway Soos has promised to take good care of Waddles and to let us see each other on FaceChat every night, so I guess losing your pig is just part of growing up, like in the book about the psychotic spider which I was supposed to have read in the fourth grade.
Where was I? Oh, right the birds, or as the guys called them, "The birdz."
Hah. The buzzing sound at the end of that word reminds me of "birds and bees," and that reminds me of you-know-what. Guess Wendy was right about those hormones! Hi-yo!
So I was saying, to my shock, I realized that those distant birds were flocking right over Pacifica's new house! I mean, I could tell because when Pacifica and I swapped bodies, I spent some time there! And though I have absolutely forgiven Pacifica and consider her one of my Gravity Falls friends now, I kinda got the giggles when I thought she might return from shoe shopping and step out of their limo only to be buried under a shower of bird droppings.
But this cloud of fowls was just adding to the mystery. Why are those birdz so interested in the Northwest farm? I have to find out! Stay tuned! Mabel Pines, Private Eye-ess, is on the case!
Right after the guys and I do our braid train thing.
Wait, wait, I think Private Eye-ette is better. No, I don't. Never mind.
When Mabel got back to the Shack, Soos said, "Oh, there you are, Hambone. Look, dude, can you do me a solid? See, tomorrow I have to drive Melody over to Portland for her checkup and MRI and all. Abuelita's goin' with us, and we're gonna be gone for like, most of the day. I totally trust Wendy to run the Shack while we're away, but she's gonna need help. Dipper will be Mr. Mystery, while Wendy drives the tram for the Mystery Tours. Will you hang around an' work the register in the gift shop?"
"Sure!" Mabel said. "Didn't I run the Shack for seventy-two hours last summer? I'll be glad to pitch in! And I won't let Dipper slack off on the job, either."
Wendy sauntered in from the gift shop, now empty of tourists. "Cool," she said. "We'll make him clean the ladies' room. That oughta blow his mind!"
"Hey, Wendy, are you busy?" Mabel asked.
"Not especially. Wednesday afternoons are, like, dead."
"Soos, can Wendy be released from work long enough to drive me over to Pacifica's house? There's something I need to check on."
"Uh, sure, Hambone. We'll be closing up in a couple hours anyhow, so take the rest of the day off, Wendy."
Wendy stared at Soos with intense eyes. "With pay, right?" Wendy asked. "Huh? Huh? Huh?"
Soos backed off a step. "Dude, don't freak me out. With full pay, yeah, of course."
"Cool. Hang on, Mabes, let me get my stuff. Wanna scare up Dipper to go along with us? He's around somewheres."
"Nah, let's make it a girls' trip," Mabel said.
"Gotcha."
They climbed into her old forest-green Dodge Dart and headed out on the six-mile drive. On the way, Mabel told Wendy about the odd behavior of the birds.
"Huh," Wendy said. "'Course it may just be they're gettin' ready to migrate. They do that every year, fly down south for the winter, and you see them gatherin' up into big flocks before they take off. Well, a bunch of them do. Some stay here the whole year around."
When they came around a curve, though, and got a clear view of the sky some two miles away, Wendy said, "Whoa! I see what you mean, Mabes! There's like a whole ginormous swarm of 'em—and I don't think they're all even from the same species! There's, like, some white ones in among 'em. Gulls?"
"I think so," Mabel replied, peering out the windshield. "Yeah, and look, there's mostly small birds, but I see some bigger ones—hawks, I think, or maybe vultures—right in with them!"
Mabel pulled out her phone and snapped several photos and a short video, then, tongue sticking out of her mouth, she forwarded the pictures. "There. I sent the photographic evidence to Ford and Dipper. Maybe they can suggest something."
They turned in at the drive, but saw that the Northwest family limo was not yet back. "Oh, man," Wendy said. "When Pacifica shops, she shops like Attila the Hun."
"What does that mean?"
Wendy shrugged. "Mm-uh. Just sounded appropriately dorky."
Mabel giggled. "Wendy, word of advice: You can't pull off dorky."
"Think not?"
"Nope."
"Well—hm. Tell you what, I'm gonna go back to the highway an' pull off on the shoulder until Pacifica and her mom get back. I mean, this ain't a new car, but I don't like cleaning bird poop off it."
"Good idea."
Wendy found a place broad enough to pull off under the protection of some roadside trees, and the two girls settled back. "Stake-out," Mabel said. "Now . . . we watch."
"Guess so."
Mabel leaned back and yawned. "Was that like his pet name?"
"What?"
"Attila the Hon. Short for 'honey?'"
With a chuckle, Wendy admitted, "You're asking the wrong girl, Mabel. I like slept through most of history last spring. That's why I'm repeating it. Huh. 'Honey.' Never thought of that."
"Use it in your next essay for history," Mabel suggested. "Betcha you'll get points for creativity. I always do."
"Mm, high school don't work like that. You'll find out."
"Yeah." Mabel sighed. "I hate to think of going back to Piedmont this year. I gotta leave Waddles here this fall."
"Yeah? Well, don't worry. Waddles likes Soos an' Melody an' me. We'll take good care of him."
"Yeah, I know, but still I'll miss him."
"Hey," Wendy said, "here's a crazy idea: Why don't you guys come up here for a few days over Christmas break, an' you can visit Waddles?"
"Don't know if Mom and Dad would go for that," Mabel said. "The round-trip by bus takes about a whole day and a half, so we wouldn't have much time to visit."
Wendy considered that, and then suggested, "Look, if I can talk Dad into leavin' me out of Apocalypse trainin' this winter—and he oughta agree, since I got like a job now an' anyways I'm by far the best one in the family at the whole thing—I can, like, drive down to Piedmont and pick you guys up an' then take you home after. You won't have to ride the bus for sixteen hours each way. I'll bet in a car it won't take more'n five or six. Road trip!"
"That sounds so cool! I'd love it!" Mabel said.
"It's a deal, then," Wendy chuckled. "Now all's I have to do is talk Dad into it. Betcha Soos will tell him he really needs me in the Shack if I ask him to do it. An' between Thanksgiving and Christmas is usually the last big tourist time before the Shack closes down for winter about mid-January, so it won't be a lie."
"Road trip! Road trip!" Mabel chanted.
"Lookin' forward to it already—hey, look, I think that's the Northwest limo comin' in."
It was—from where they had parked, the girls could look down a long straightaway toward town, and the big car was unmistakable. Wendy had killed the Dart's engine. She was just reaching for the key to start it again, when Mabel shrieked, "The birds!"
Wendy froze, hand extended. The sky darkened as an enormous cloud of birds, thousands of them, roiled and swirled and funneled down from the sky with a thundering clatter of wings. The oncoming limo slowed as the bird-nado bore down on it—and then it vanished beneath the whirling, boiling, seething black and brown and white swirl of birds.
Mabel got a glimpse of headlights coming on, and she could see that the car was weaving, lurching off the far side of the highway, but then she couldn't see anything of the automobile at all, and when she asked "What's going on?" she knew that Wendy couldn't even hear her.
The rattle and whir of a million wings drowned out all other sound like the mad rush of storm winds. Wendy yelped in alarm as birds smacked against the driver's window of the Dart, even pounded on the roof—and they were just on the fringes of the furious flock.
And then—the birds abruptly scattered, not in an organized way, but just flew in all directions, now seeming calm and without focus. Within seconds, they had cleared off, leaving behind only drifting feathers to show they'd been there at all.
"C'mon!" Wendy yelled. "Gotta see if they're all right!"
She ran across the highway, her red hair flying. Her trapper hat fell off, and Mabel stooped as she ran and scooped it up off the pavement.
The Northwest limo was in the ditch on the highway shoulder. Every window in it had been spiderwebbed and bulls-eyed with cracks; dozens of dead birds lay around it on the highway and in the grass. As the girls came up to the car, the driver's door opened and the Northwest butler and chauffeur, Wellington, pulled himself out, breathing hard. "I say!"
"Hey, man, are you OK?" Wendy asked.
Wellington leaned against the hood. "Just—just shaken, Miss. See to Mrs. Northwest, in the back."
Wendy wrenched the door open. Mrs. Priscilla Northwest, her face frozen in shock—or perhaps by numerous plastic surgeries—stared out with wide, frightened eyes. "Are you hurt?" Wendy asked, extending her hand. "C'mon, the birds are gone."
"Pacifica," Mrs. Northwest said in a voice edged with hysteria. "Where is she? Where is she?"
"Isn't she in the car?" Mabel asked, but she could see that aside from Pacifica's mom, the backseat was empty.
"She—she leaped out when we went off the road," Mrs. Northwest said, looking around wildly. "Is she unhurt? Where is she?"
She was—nowhere.
Which was impossible, because the whole event had lasted only seconds, and the ground was flat on this side of the highway as far as the farmhouse, with no place to hide. And Mabel and Wendy were sure that Pacifica hadn't run across the highway, toward the side where they had parked.
But Pacifica wasn't hiding under the limo, or in the ditch, or anywhere on the trimmed lawn. And she hadn't had time to reach the house.
Yet she was missing.
And when Priscilla Northwest realized that, she promptly lost it.
