"Anointed water," Dipper said as he paced back and forth in the living room. Mabel watched him from the chair. "It's supposed to banish category-ones in a snap. I should be able to get some by the end of the day."
Mabel kicked her legs idly, brushing the soles of her shoes against the carpet. She was unwittingly seated beside Greg's ghost, who was eavesdropping again with his big brother. "Do we really have to banish them right away?"
"We don't need another displaced spirit in the Shack, much less three of them," Dipper said, stopping for a second. "We've already got Bill possibly watching our every move, that one fairy you caught the other day, and I'm pretty sure we've got an old guy somewhere in our vents." The twins looked upwards.
Above their heads, a soft thumping sounded and Larry King's distant voice called, "So you're an invisible wizard! Let's talk about that."
"And the invisible wizard," Mabel added.
Dipper waved a hand. "Yeah, sure, whatever. Anyway, we don't need three more spirits crowding up the joint."
"Still seems kinda harsh." Mabel tapped her chin. "Even if they were stalking us all summer, I guess?"
"Oh, right. What exactly was the singin' salmon saying about the road to Gravity Falls?" Dipper resumed pacing. "The way it was talking, it's almost like it originated outside the city. Like it died somewhere else. But then why would it come here?"
"Why does anything weird come to Gravity Falls?" Mabel asked rhetorically with a shrug, then smiled. "Like you!"
"You came with me too so hah," Dipper shot back.
"I'm the fun kind of weird, so double-hah."
After a beat, Dipper asked, "You don't think they're in here now, do you?"
Wirt and Greg looked at each other. They weren't used to people knowing about their presence.
Mabel said, "It's not like there's any way to know." She craned her neck to the side, checking the clock.
"The ghost showed up once already. I'm sure it could possess a vessel again. Maybe tell us about its unfinished business? And we could finish the business for it so it'd go to the afterlife? I'm mostly working off tv ghost plots here," Dipper said, unsure.
"Yeah, but my thing with Candy and Grenda," Mabel reminded. "It's starting soon."
"Right, right," Dipper said. "I mean, we could do it another night. It's not like there's a hurry. The singin' salmon spirit didn't seem to be malicious, exactly."
Mabel smiled brightly-at first. Then the smile faded and a look of guilt set in instead. "You need me to help?"
Dipper shook his head. "I guess you don't have to. But it seems like a good idea, y'know? I'd rather have you here for backup."
"I'll cancel with the girls," Mabel said, sounding defeated and trotting over to the phone.
"You don't have to!" Dipper reminded, but his true focus was on the journal as he scanned it for last-minute tips.
"It sounds like they're gonna summon you or something," Wirt told Greg once the room fell silent.
"Yeah! I'm gonna haunt them!" Greg answered. "While you look for clues!"
"I thiiink we've exhausted the clue supply."
Greg shook his head stubbornly. "I'll distract them while you and Commissioner Funderburker find something vital for the case. That's the plan!"
Wirt tried to protest but he couldn't think of a worthwhile counter-plan to suggest, so he sighed dramatically and waved at the frog. "Fine. Don't leave the Shack, okay? I don't like losing sight of you."
As spirits, if Greg wandered off and Wirt didn't find him soon enough, would that condemn Wirt to an eternity searching the earth for his lost brother? What would be the chances of a single spirit finding another over the span of the globe's four corners, from the hidden depths of the oceans to the highest reach of the atmosphere? After all, Wirt and Greg could hover. They'd been able to get to the top of the muffin-graffiti'd water tower. Just how high could they go? Would Greg ever decide to explore the cosmos? How many eons of dark nothingness would they have to travel before finding another solid mass in space? How many infinities would it take for Wirt to find Greg if Greg decided to float all the way above the stratosphere? Or, potentially worse, how long could one of them spend in darkness if, while walking through objects, they sunk down below the surface of the Earth's crust and went to the untouchable core of the planet? Would they even be able to see or hear each other at that point?
Wirt fretted over these questions as he obediently gestured to Jason Funderburker and led him upstairs to Dipper and Mabel's room again. He passed Mabel, who had gone up at some point and was returning with a toy bear in her arms.
"He needs to possess a vessel, right?" she called down to Dipper.
"Please not the sock puppets again," Dipper groaned.
"Nope!" she said, hopping down the last stair and presenting her prize.
Dipper shrieked in horror, falling out of his seat and scrambling away. "Oh no, please, no, anything but Bea-"
"They're quite a pair, Mabel and Bear-o!" Mabel belted out, somewhat in tune. "Her un-bear-lievable bear!"
"Nope! Nope! No Bear-o! We all hate Bear-o!" He snatched the toy out of Mabel's arms and tossed it behind him. "No self-respecting spirit is going to possess something like Bear-o, and even if it did-"
Greg saw his chance. Without thinking, he dove forward into the bedraggled bear puppet, which glowed blue for a moment as it was possessed.
"Her un-bear-lievable bear!" Greg sang a quick reprise. His voice lacked the mechanical squeaks, tinny quality, and grinding gears of the singin' salmon, since his vessel wasn't a robot fish. It sounded more childlike, though still eerily echoing, through Bear-o's mouth.
"Not doing this, no." Dipper threw his hands up. "We are not having a conversation through the veil of life and death with your creepy puppet bear."
"Fine, spoilsport." Mabel stuck out her tongue at Dipper. "I'll go get a sock puppet. Hey! Bear-o!" she said, craning her head around Dipper.
The puppet moved to stare at her.
"Would you rather be Puppet-Me, Puppet-Stan, Puppet-Dipper-"
"It's not possessing puppet-me," Dipper interjected.
"Puppet-mayor, puppet-Gabe, ooh, that'd be weird-"
Greg interrupted. "I want to be puppet mayor! Mayor of all puppets! Who's also a ghost!"
"Okay! I'll be right back. The mayor puppet's in the attic, though it's kinda, uh, sorta really burnt from those big finale explosives." Mabel wagged a finger. "You two play nice while I'm up there."
"I'll behave. I'll say boo only a couple times," Bear-O agreed in Greg's voice. "Oh no! Did that count for one of them?"
"Mabel," Dipper said in a strained voice. "Talking Bear-O is ten times creepier than regular Bear-O, get him out of it now please."
As Mabel popped back upstairs to grab a new puppet, Wirt was exploring new areas of the twin's room he hadn't seen. For example, there was a closet he walked into, observing the boxes stacked everywhere and the jars of eyes, bags of teeth, and taxidermy samples that Wirt assumed for his own mental well-being were fakes, being stored here due to lack of space in the tourable part of the Shack.
But Wirt went back to peering under beds and through windows, giving the triangular window a suspicious squint, before he noticed the Mabel puppet on a bedpost. He'd seen it before, but now that he knew puppets were considered a body he could possess, he was curious. Greg seemed to slip into the singin' salmon so easily. Would Wirt be able to do the same?
Experimentally, Wirt reached over to touch the sock. It was solid to the touch! Well, as solid as soft fabric could be. His hands didn't turn incorporeal and slip through the sock like he had come to expect.
"Weird," he said to himself, putting the puppet on his hand. "Could someone hear me when I talk, now?"
He didn't sound any different to himself. Hm. Wirt flapped his hand open and closed a few times and said aloud, "What about now?"
This time, his voice had a more solid quality. It was easy to miss, but it sounded louder, more present in the room, like Wirt's voice itself were plugged into a very quiet amp. "Neat," he decided as he flapped the puppet's mouth. "I guess if I do this, then I could talk to Dipper and Mabel too."
"Wait, what?" said a voice from behind him.
Wirt whirled around, almost dropping the sock puppet. Mabel stood behind him, an armful of puppets crammed into a huge cardboard box that she struggled to carry. "Oh, uhm, hi, that is, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be snooping, but Greg told me to, and-" The girl was staring at the sock puppet dangling in Wirt's hand. Or, from Mabel's perspective, she stared at her sock doppelganger silently hover in midair.
Wirt slapped his hand through his face. Of course. He adjusted the sock puppet on his hand and started moving its mouth. "Sorry about that, Mabel." Wirt's voice came out loud and clear.
Mabel dropped her puppet box on the floor.
