Dipper Steps Up
(Piedmont, California, 2014)
Chapter 7
Later that afternoon, Dipper and Mabel walked over to the Taylors' house. When Mrs. Taylor answered the doorbell, Dipper took a good look at her, and Mabel had been right—add twenty years to Pacifica, trim her hair, and she'd look almost exactly like Chuck's mom. "How is he?" Mabel asked.
"Resting," she said quietly. "Let me see if he's asleep. He'd probably like to have you visit him if he isn't."
She went up the stairs, came back to the top, and beckoned them. Chuck's bedroom was on the corner of the house, with two windows, one looking out on the back yard. Dipper glanced down at a basketball goal and, off near the rear fence, a home-made contraption: a sheet of plywood stood on end on a framework. A rectangular hole in it puzzled him, until he saw that nearly fifty feet toward the house a pitcher's mound had been heaped up, a white rubber pitcher's plate mounted in it. Then he realized what the plywood was: It's a target! Chuck practices pitching, and that cut-out is the strike zone!
Chuck himself sat up on the bed with his legs stretched out. He wore a yellow T-shirt and blue jeans and was shoeless but wearing white socks. He'd been propped against two pillows, and he'd obviously been listening to music—red ear buds and a digital tablet lay on the bed beside him. "Hi," he said listlessly when they came in.
"We were worried about you," Mabel said. She pulled the only chair from Chuck's desk and sat down next to him. "Are you feeling any better?"
He shrugged. "Don't know. I feel OK. Mad. Scared."
"What happened, man?" Dipper, standing next to the foot of the bed, asked.
With a shake of his head, Chuck said, "Don't really know. First time, just before I fainted, I felt kind of, I don't know—just out of it?" He looked puzzled. "Ever lost a lot of sleep and then felt like everything is sort of—distant? Fuzzy? I dunno, Dipper. Like I was only . . . half there, like nothing around me was real. And then everything went black, and the next thing I remember, I was laying on my back looking up at everybody and they told me I'd fainted."
"How about today?" Dipper asked.
"Kind of the same, but different, too."
"Same-y but different-y," Mabel said with a knowing nod.
"Yeah," Chuck said, giving her a weak smile. "Sort of. I was pitching, leaning in to see Big W's signal, and then—like the world just closed down—what do they call it? Tunnel vision? Everything went dark, but it was like there was one little circle that I could still see, centered right on Big W's fingers and everything else was just . . . dark. I thought I was gonna black out again, and I went down on my knee and braced myself—I remember pressing my fingers down on the pitcher's mound dirt. It was real warm from the sun. So, anyway, I didn't faint, and my vision got all right again, but when Coach helped me to the bench, I felt that same kind of—what, detached feeling? Like I nearly wasn't there, like everything was fading out around me."
Dipper reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a black plastic device like a compact remote control. "Would you mind if I scanned you with this?" he asked.
Chuck laughed, weakly. "What is it, a tricorder? Like from the Star Trek movie?"
"Kind of," Dipper said. "Our great-uncle Stanford Pines is a researcher, and this is one of his inventions."
"It won't hurt," Mabel promised. "Hold my hand."
"OK," Chuck said, reaching for it. "But the doctors couldn't find anything."
Dipper went to the other side of the bed and switched on the anomaly detector. It was a special kind—its sensor swept what Ford called the Spectral Spectrum to detect any ghostly activity. It made no noise, and a green light showed as Dipper slowly began to direct it toward Chuck, first his feet, then his legs, his hips, his torso, and upward.
When it got to his head, the light turned orange.
"Huh," Dipper said. "Inconclusive." He turned off the device and tucked it back into his pocket.
"Yeah, like the freakin' MRI." Chuck sighed. "Man, I hate having to go back to the doctor. Specialist this time."
"Do what they say, Chuck," Dipper said. "We don't have a team without you."
"Yeah, that's the worst of it," Chuck muttered. "I let the team down."
"No, you didn't!" Mabel said. "They're all worried about you and they're all behind you! You just get well—that's all they want."
Dipper squirmed a little. "Um, hey, bathroom?" he asked.
Chuck nodded toward the bedroom door. "To the left, second door."
But Dipper didn't go to the bathroom. Instead, he went downstairs, softly. He heard a voice and followed it. Mrs. Taylor stood at the kitchen counter, a cup of coffee on it, talking into her phone. "Just get a time for him," she said. "No, he seems better, but I'm worried. Love you, too. Hurry home." Dipper cleared his throat, and she looked around, turning her phone off. She asked quietly, "How is he feeling?"
Dipper replied, "OK, he says. But we need to talk, Mrs. Taylor. Where's Chuck's dad?"
"He drove to the hospital. Our family doctor recommended we consult a neurologist there. He can't make time to see Chuck today, but he agreed to talk to Jim about Chuck's symptoms. He's going to try to examine him on Monday."
"May I sit down?"
Margaret Taylor smiled. "Let's go to the living room. It's more comfortable." She put her coffee cup—still almost full, Dipper noticed—in the sink.
She led him to a cozy sort of room—curtained windows letting soft light in, big plush sofa, two armchairs. Mrs. Taylor sat on one of these, and Dipper took the corner of the sofa nearest her. "This is hard to talk about," he said. "I'm just a kid, and what I have to say sounds crazy. I know that."
"What is it?" Mrs. Taylor asked.
"Will you hear me out? Please?" Dipper asked.
"Sure," she said. "Chuck thinks a lot of you. Go ahead."
"Well—to start with, do you know about your ancestor, Emmeline Northwest?"
Mrs. Taylor crossed her arms and hugged herself as if suddenly chilled. "I've heard of her."
"She came from a little town named Gravity Falls, Oregon," Dipper said. "Her dad—well, I have to tell you the truth, he wasn't a good person. And she hated that—I don't mean she hated her dad, but she hated the things he did to people. So she ran away." He filled in the details of her coming to California, marrying Ernest Humbolt in San Francisco, moving to Oakland after his death.
"I knew some of that," Mrs. Taylor said. "But my folks didn't really talk about her much. Her son was my great-grandfather, and his daughter, Persephone Humbolt, was my grandmother. I remember her as an old lady-she married my grandfather Luther Baxley late and had my dad when she was in her forties. She told me a few things about her own grandmother—Emmeline, I mean. But I didn't even know Emmeline's original last name until my grandmother passed away and we found her grandmother's old marriage certificate among her things." She tilted her head. "What does this have to do with Chuck, though?"
Dangerous ground! I need to watch my step! Dipper took a slow breath, trying to keep his voice calm:"OK, this is the crazy part. My uncle, Dr. Stanford Pines, lives in Gravity Falls. He's a famous paranormal investigator. I mean, he's a brilliant scientist, Mrs. Taylor. He's got patents and inventions, he's published work on his research, the government's even commissioned him to do work—he's the real deal, you know?" Dipper stood and took the compact anomaly detector out of his pocket. "He and his colleague Dr. Fiddleford McGucket, built this. It can trace any . . . well, any ghostly emanations. I know. You don't believe in ghosts."
Mrs. Taylor leaned toward him and lowered her voice. "But I do, Dipper. I do!"
And she believed in ghosts for a good reason. "I've seen one!" she admitted.
She told him about it. When she was just a little girl, five or six, her parents had taken her to the site of her great-grandfather's boyhood home—and of his mother, Emmeline. The whole block would soon be razed for the construction of a shopping center.
"We couldn't go inside the house," Margaret Taylor told Dipper. "All the houses were condemned. I was surprised it looked like such a little place—old-style California, adobe with a red-tile roof, but half the tiles were broken or just gone, the wood warped where they had been. I remember, all the windows were broken out, too. The front door had been taken off its hinges or knocked down. When you looked in, you just saw shadows and darkness. It had 'Do Not Enter' tapes crisscrossed over the opening. I remember my mom reading them to me and explaining what they meant."
She shivered. "My dad and mom walked around taking pictures of the house from all angles. I stood in the yard—even the street had been closed off there, and nobody was around but us. The house was scary. I started to imagine things. The worst was—I saw a man standing in the doorway, in the shadows. He was smiling at me. He wanted me to come inside. I could tell."
"Describe him," Dipper said, taking out a pocket notebook and pen.
She frowned. "I was just a little girl, and it's been a long time. It's all hazy. He had a long brown beard and a sharp, pointy nose. Dark eyebrows that made him look like he was frowning. He . . . he wore . . . I think it was faded blue overalls and a gray shirt with the sleeves rolled way up the arms. And . . . boots, I think. Dirty, like ones farmers might wear." She took a deep breath. "Even though he scared me, somehow I halfway wanted to walk into that house. I even took one or two steps. Then my dad and mom came around from the back yard. . . and right in front of my eyes, the man in the doorway dissolved."
"Dissolved?" Dipper asked more sharply than he intended, remembering the bizarre way Archibald Corduroy had vanished, first his hair and skin going, then muscles and organs and finally his skeleton.
"I mean he faded away," Mrs. Taylor said. "I—I saw that happen! He turned transparent, and then he was gone! My mother and father told me I'd imagined it—but it's as clear to me as any memory."
"Just a minute," Dipper said. He took out his cell phone and scrolled through photos. "It's here somewhere . . . here! Does this look anything like him?"
He showed Mrs. Taylor a picture of the commemorative statue that stood in downtown Gravity Falls, before Bill Cipher casually melted it: a bearded pioneer, grasping a telescope in his right hand and a flagpole in his left, his left foot resting atop a stone outcrop as he gazed sternly at something in the distance.
"Yes," Mrs. Taylor said. "I—that could be a statue of the man I saw. Where is that?"
"It used to be in Gravity Falls, Oregon," Dipper said. "I mean, there's a replacement standing there now that's exactly like this one, but this is the original. That first statue got destroyed in, uh, a freak accident." Kind of true. Bill was totally a freak.
"The town where Emmeline Northwest came from," Mrs. Taylor said. "Are you saying—is Chuck suffering from some sort of family curse?"
"Not exactly," Dipper told her. "Uh, OK, the guy the statue represented—he was a fraud. He cheated and stole and lied and treated other people like dirt. He wasn't even what he claimed to be—the man who founded and named the town. And he's been dead since about 1874 or so. But—I think his evil is lingering on."
"I don't understand."
"The detector I showed you," Dipper said, "showed an orange light. That's not the worst it could've been—worst would be if the light turned red, which would mean there was a ghost close by. But the orange light indicated that some paranormal influence may be interfering with Chuck. From other sources, I'm nearly convinced that it's coming from the spirit of the man whose statue that was. We're coming up on the 140th anniversary of his death. That's one of the dangerous ones—haunting ghosts gain power every seventh year, and this is the twentieth seven-year span nearing completion. if his spirit is still around, it's a time when he might try to push through again into the world of the living." He took a deep breath. "Can you believe that?"
"I saw him," she said. "I believe he exists somehow. And I've had a strange feeling about Chuck's illness from the start. What can we do?"
"There are some protections I can try," Dipper said. "But the hard part—the really dangerous one—is to exorcise the ghost. It's not just hazardous, but difficult to do, because ordinary doctors and specialists, no matter how smart, will be against it. But I think—I'm afraid that—sending the spirit out of our world might be the only way of helping Chuck. If you'll let me, I'll call in my great-uncle on this. I'd trust him with my life—or Chuck's."
Mrs. Taylor frowned. "What does the ghost want with my son?"
"Well—the ghost will be like the living man was, selfish, full of spite, domineering, and driven by hate. He has other descendants—but they took after him more than Emmeline did. I think he wants to return to earth in a living body—but the body of a descendant of the daughter who defied him. I think he wants to take over Chuck's mind, to steal his soul and turn Chuck into, well, himself—into Nathaniel Northwest."
The instant that he pronounced the name, both he and Mrs. Taylor started spasmodically.
For upstairs a terrified Mabel screamed, "Oh, my God! Help! Somebody! Help!"
