"No, really, Sixer, why does every small town have weird shit in it?" Stan gestured to the desolate tundra around them. "Can't we find a monster in a bar or at a beach or something? Or at least one somewhere warm?"

"If you want to continue to be petty about it, we are near a beach." Ford scoffed, momentarily glancing up from his anomaly tracker. "And, as I recall, you're the one who didn't want to go to Mexico."

"I've had enough of South America for one lifetime, thanks." Stan folded his arms.

"Mexico is in Central America."

"Everything looks the same from inside a prison."

Ford groaned. This argument had become tiresome over the last three weeks. "My point remains. There's an entirely new and completely uncatalogued creature running around the desert, and you won't let me investigate it." Pausing, he matched his brother's petulant stance. "So, we came here instead."

Stan threw a hand aside, frustrated. "It's just a Chupacabra, it's not like it's anything interesting. I've come up with better things for the Shack than some goat blood-eating vampire rip-off."

"It's a new creature—"

"It's not new—"

"They were sighted for the first time in 1995—that's new!"

Stan snorted. "Yeah, okay, Poindexter." He gestured again to their surroundings. "So where is…whatever it is we're looking for?"

"Nearby, if the tracker is to be believed." Ford returned to the dubious beeping thing on his wrist. After taking a moment to interpret its output in the waning sunlight, he motioned the same way they had been walking for nearly half an hour. "This way."

Harrumphing, Stan stuffed his hands back into his pockets and followed his brother through the scrub brush. Their boots crunched against the permafrost, an arrhythmic staccato against the monotonous beeping from Ford's device. Wind huffed every so often; as it cut through the numerous layers of clothing and numbed any exposed skin, it brought the faint, salty scent of the ocean.

Ford had once told him that smell was the sense most deeply connected with memory, something about primal instincts and less evolved parts of the brain—more science mumbo-jumbo that meant nothing to him. He'd been thrilled to add that most of their childhood memories (and, by proxy, most of Stan's happier memories) must be attached to the sea; whatever they couldn't dredge up in Gravity Falls, Ford was sure they could revive aboard the Stan o' War II. Since leaving wendigo country, he'd been particularly insistent on the matter, for weeks asking after newly returned memories whenever he wrote in his journal, which was often.

What Ford didn't seem to realize was that saltwater smelled the same everywhere, whether it was in the Arctic, the Great Egg Inlet, or the Gulf of Honduras. "The sea" meant more than Glass Shard Beach. A few memories struggled to surface, as they had since the end of summer, none forming more than a cursory impression: a small, dark space and the rock of the ocean; heavy lifting and splashes; zapatos cementos; hunger, desperation, and the inability to make his dumb, cold fingers just work for once; sand between his toes and a racing heart. He wondered if he could get his hands on toffee peanuts somewhere out here.

Lost in his thoughts, Stan walked directly into his brother.

"Moses, Stanley, could you pay even the slightest bit of attention?" Ford's voice lacked conviction in its frustration. Too much excitement bubbled within him, a response to the tracker's rapid beeping. "I need you to keep a look out."

"For what?"

"The Qalupalik."

Stan stared at his brother. "That's what it's called? And you gleaned that from the conversation earlier, huh?"

"Well, my Ter isn't terribly strong—" Ford struggled not to grin at Stan's groan "—but, from what I gathered, the creature abducting the village children is called a Qalupalik, and it lives in or near the water. Though, no one really clarified that it was on the coastline…but, then, it couldn't really be terrorizing the village if it were a deep-sea creature…"

"When and why did you bother to learn—what did you call it?" Stan went to scratch at the back of his neck, but the layers of scarf and jacket and gloves made the habitual motion pointless.

"Ter, Stanley. It's a Samic language, a branch of Uralic…" Seeing his brother's eyes glaze immediately in boredom, Ford shook his head. "They spoke a similar language in the Dimension of Obscure Languages. I spent a few months there—and this was before I got my hands on a universal translator, mind you—so I managed to pick up enough to get by." He chuckled. "I'll admit, even I'm a bit surprised that I remember as much as I do."

Stan shrugged in an enormous, dramatic motion. "Yeah, that seems reasonable."

Ford nodded, missing his brother's tone entirely. "I can explain further, later, when we're not hunting a monster. The Qalupalik should be nearby, likely in the water." Eager, he returned to the tracker on his wrist, the exposed skin apparently immune to the freezing temperature. "This way."

Stan followed a few paces behind his brother. His eyes focused on the nearby craggy shoreline. The sea lapped calmly, glistering in the rapidly diminishing light. There were no animals around, he noted, no gulls flying overhead, no crabs scuttling among the rocks, no seals or walruses or whatever aquatic animals that might live in this chilly wasteland lazing on the beach. For a moment, he thought it odd, to be surrounded by exclusively inorganic sounds—the tracker's beeping, their boots crunching against the ground, the wind rustling the brush, the waves susurrating against the shore; he then remembered that they were allegedly near some sort of carnivorous beast, and he no longer found their absence so odd.

Once, when he was sixteen, he stayed out until some asinine hour of the morning. He had a match that night, and he had utterly destroyed his opponent, breaking his nose and knocking him out in the first round. Of course, he hadn't escaped unscathed, but it was only a few bruises. Easily the cleanest victory of his short (legal) boxing career. No one had seen it—Ford was working on his science fair experiment, Ma had bridge with the other neighborhood women, and Pops had stopped coming to his matches long before. While not something he did often, he had gone out with some of the other kids; by the time they decided to turn in, he knew it was too late to sneak into the house. Pops would've flayed him if he made even the slightest noise. Instead, he chose to spend the rest of the chilly winter night in the Stan o' War.

It had been eerie, at first. Just the shush of the ocean, the creaking of the warped wood, and the whistle of the wind through the boardwalk. No living creature made a sound, himself included. It was surreal. Five minutes away, he knew, even in the middle of the night, the streets would be teeming with life, but he could hear none of it.

Like most of the memories he'd regained, that night smelled strongly of saltwater.

Something amongst the waves dragged him from the memory. A dark shadow undulated with the water. He thought it might be green, but he wasn't sure.

"Ford?"

"Yes, Stanley?"

"You see that?" He gestured toward the shallows, where the dark thing waited.

Ford's brow furrowed. "See what?"

"That…thing." By the time Stan managed to think of what to call it, the shadow had disappeared. "Well, it was there."

Curious, Ford followed his brother's motion. He reached the edge of the water and peered in, leaning as far as his balance would allow. When he found nothing, he turned back to Stan. "What did you see?"

"It was a…" Stan vaguely moved his hands, hoping to conjure a proper description; he failed to invent the words for whatever it was that he didn't quite see. "A thing."

Ford considered the explanation. With a quick glance to the tracker on his wrist, he frowned. "If it was something, it's far gone now. Perhaps it was a trick of the light—or what little we have left. You brought your flashlight, didn't you, Stanley?"

"Yeah…" He tarried, eyes lingering on the spot, and eventually followed his brother. "Are you sure we should be hunting man-eating monsters in the dark?"

"When else would we hunt them?" Ford's genuinely perplexed question prevented any further commentary. "Aside, from what I gathered, it's likely only one man-eating monster. Likely. I was never wholly sure of myself on the matter of numbers…" He devolved into a ramble, debating with himself the potentially different numbers, their possible translations, and whether the denizens of the Dimension of Obscure Languages counted in base ten. He abandoned the empty spot on the beach and continued his trek, still muttering to himself.

Wordless, Stan fell in line. He wondered about the creature in the water. What sort of monster was it? Ford had never properly described it (and Stan wasn't about to set him onto another rant), just that it was a beast preying on the local children. It couldn't be too big, he reckoned. Certainly not too big to punch.

The wind picked up when the sun set; the scrub brush rustled louder, the wind howled in its own right, and Ford loudened such that his raving could be heard over all things. The twins retrieved their flashlights, cutting thin paths through the darkness. Stan allowed his attention to drift, collecting the pieces of memories that the night brought on. More impressions—a night camping outside an overturned RV, desperately searching the woods for something, breaking into a warehouse somewhere in Maine. The night in Maine, however, didn't have music.

"You hear that, Sixer?"

Ford's voice cut out for a moment. Bewildered, he turned to his brother. "What are you talking about? How could you possibly hear anything—?"

"Moses, shut up, Ford." Stan grabbed Ford's shoulder and covered his mouth. "Just listen for a sec, would ya?"

He obliged. In his silence, the two could hear singing from not so great a distance. Feminine, but deep, throaty, with wide, round notes, strung together in long legato phrases. Above all else, it soothed, like a lullaby. Ford's breath hitched.

"The piper beckons!" He snatched Stan's arm, dragging him along as he ran. Stan stumbled initially, but quickly regained his footing and kept pace. The flashlight beams bobbed with their steps. "Come, Stanley! It's near!"

The voice led them to a rocky outcropping, teetering over a calm cove. There sat a creature—undoubtedly, the creature they sought—humanoid, gaunt, with ghastly green flesh and impossibly long, sharp claws. Its webbed fingers clutched a woven bag or basket, something large enough to carry a child; one's head barely poked over the brim, a messy ruffle of brown.

Stan moved before he realized what he was doing. As he reached the creature, it peered up at him with glassy black eyes, clutching the woven thing close to its chest. It made to flee, pausing only when the bag didn't move with it: Stan had snared the basket, careful of the mop of hair peeking out. Instead of running, however, the creature tugged, pulling at the handle, enormous claws digging deep into the weave—

The bag ripped. Immediately recovering from its stumble, the creature dove toward Stan, avidly ignoring him and reaching doggedly for the torn piece. The weave fluttered between its webbed fingers—

A green shot narrowly missed both Stan and the Qalupalik. Startled, both turned to Ford. The creature watched him level the laser pistol, carefully taking aim; when the weapon fully recharged, the Qalupalik skittered out of the light, to the edge of the outcropping, and leapt. Ford darted after it, skidding to a stop at the cliff.

Stan let his brother handle the creature. His attention drifted to the woven thing now in his possession. Retrieving the flashlight he'd dropped in the struggle, he looked inside what he passively decided was really more of a backpack.

Another shot fired. The water sizzled.

"Fucking refraction." Ford watched the Qalupalik while his weapon recharged. Instead of swimming away like a typical creature fleeing harm, it floated a fathom below the surface of the water, perfectly still but for its mass of dark hair shifting in the tide. Ford was unsure why it didn't move out of his light, but it was much easier to aim at a motionless object than one moving. A quick calculation and a slight adjustment to account for the water's refraction, and—

"Stanford."

He started at the sudden presence of his brother's hand on his shoulder. Ford managed to keep his eyes and flashlight trained on the Qalupalik, though he turned his head. "Did it hurt you? How is the child?"

"Uh…"

"What, Stanley? What's wrong?"

"Look."

Against his better judgement, Ford looked away from the creature. Beside him, Stan held out a doll, one as large as a toddler, with a mop of ragged brown hair. The paint had been worn away, eroded from the ravages of the Arctic tide; its face had become a ghastly, plastic reflection of a real child's.

"An old doll?" Ford frowned, glancing at the woven amautiit at his brother's feet. The ripped strap jutted out at an odd angle.

Stan lowered the doll into the backpack. "Guess so."

"But…"

"I don't know what to tell you, Sixer." Grabbing the amautiit, Stan stepped to the edge of the outcropping; below, the Qalupalik still floated, motionless, black eyes fixated on the bag. He dropped the backpack over the ledge. Before it hit the water, the creature snatched it and swam into the darkness.

Slowly, Ford holstered his gun, watching the place where the Qalupalik had been. His hands proceeded to occupy themselves by toying with his extra fingers. "An old doll…?"