Chapter 10: Shaking Down the Shack

(December 29-30, 2015)

"Come on, Mabes," Wendy urged. "Snap out of it!"

"Agh! Nobody will ever love me!" Mabel wailed.

Dipper opened the door—well, opened the vending machine, a sentence that makes sense only in conjunction with the Mystery Shack—to Mabel's broken-hearted cry. He asked, "What's going on?"

"It's getting to her big-time," Wendy said, rubbing the curled-up Mabel's back. "I think we ought to get Mabes out of here."

Mabel had bowed herself up in the middle of the floor, in a fetal position. The spooky graffiti had nearly surrounded her in a circle: TOO SILLY TO LIVE. SELFISH PIG. FAT FACE. Worse. Tears rolled off her cheeks, and she shivered, hugging herself tightly.

"Come on," Dipper said, stepping into the circle. Like footprints, the writing followed him: FRAUD. DWEEB. WEAK.

Grinding his teeth, he leaned over Mabel and tried to help her up. She flailed her arms, swatting him. "Leave me alone! I always guilt you into helping me! I don't deserve to—"

Grunting, Dipper picked her up. Bawling, she clung to his neck. "I'm so sorry," she sobbed.

"Let's go," he said. He staggered out of the Shack with her, to McGuckets' WarMobile. Wendy got in, too. "Strap her in," Dipper said. "Then strap in yourself and hang on."

"OK, ready." As he clicked his own seat belt, Dipper took a deep breath. Then he started the engine and said, "I command you to activate. Home base, on the double!"

"Wow!" Wendy said a minute later as the McGucket garage door closed behind the vehicle. They helped Mabel out. She could walk, unsteadily, and they supported her. "S-sorry," she mumbled. "I—I'm no good as help. I—I—"

"It's not your fault," Dipper said. As they helped her inside, he explained what Ford had told him about drolls. "We have to find the nest," he said. They woke the McGuckets, who agreed to take care of Mabel—"Don't let her sleep. Call me if she starts acting strange," Dipper said. Then he added, "Not like herself, I mean. Call me right away!"

Fiddleford offered to return to the Shack with them, but Dipper said, "Better that we go. Wendy's nearly immune, and anybody else would be affected. I'll report back as soon as we find something."

The WarMobile zipped them back to the Shack. Wendy said quietly, "Dip, before we go back in—I'm not immune. It's bothering me." She took a deep breath. "Am I too old for you, man?"

He took her hand. –Don't believe their lies, Lumberjack Girl. You're just right for me. Look at my feelings. He opened his heart to her.

Oh, Dip! He felt a surge of her affection and felt the old Wendy determination coming back in a flood of confidence. OK, man. Let's find 'em and burn 'em out!

And before they broke contact, she sent him a great wave of love. "I can do anything now," Dipper said. "Let's do it!"

At first glance, the gift shop had returned to normal, all the graffiti faded to invisibility. However, as they stepped inside, the writing started to show up again: DIPPER IS SCARED. WENDY HAS BIG FEET. Low-level stuff at first, but Dipper sensed it would intensify.

"Start in the attic," he said. "We look everywhere and we don't split up."

"I'm glad we learned that lesson from Chadley and Trixandra," Wendy said, though her voice sounded strained and it didn't quite come off as a joke.

Dipper explained what they were looking for, a ball-shaped mass of twigs and scraps, roughly soccer-ball sized or larger. They went through the attic bedroom, stripping off the bed coverings—Dipper was surprised when he pulled the quilts and sheets off his own bed and found one of his long-sleeved t-shirts there.

"I sleep here," Wendy said quietly. "I wear the shirt."

On the wall: WENDY LOVES DIPPER'S STINK.

"Come on," Dipper said. "And ignore what they say, 'cause that—that makes me love you even more!"

LIAR!

"Ignore it," Dipper said again. "They're the liars."

Nothing in the closet, though the wall held a message: INVISIBLE WIZARD STEALS FOOD.

"Invisible wizard?" Wendy asked.

"Probably imaginary," Dipper said. "But don't change clothes with the closet door open, just in case."

Nothing on the landing outside the room, or in the slant-roofed attic storage closet (well, lots of stuff there, piles of it which they had to sort through item by item, but no ball of twigs et cetera).

They went through every room on the main floor, even looking on top of the beams and moving the fridge and dishwasher out to check behind them. Nothing. And all the while the taunts and accusations grew cruder, meaner. "They're getting to me again," Wendy growled. "If they'd show themselves, I'd take an axe to them."

"They probably don't have solid enough bodies for that to do any good," Dipper said. "Come on. Where haven't we looked?"

They took everything out of the shelves under the cash registers, looked in the snack bar, went through Abuelita's room and the nursery and Soos and Melody's room. "Gah!" Wendy said as the message WENDY HAS NO TITS scrawled itself on the wall. "Shut the fudge up!" Except it wasn't fudge.

That wasn't like her, and Dipper grimly redoubled his efforts, though he was finding it hard to concentrate, too. "The labs," he said. "Has to be the labs!"

It wasn't the labs. They went through all of them, even the secret one that Dipper wasn't supposed to know about—small, eight-by-eight foot, crammed with—he hoped—dead specimens of awful creatures.

"We oughta get out of here," Wendy said. "I'm getting so mad I can't think straight!"

Dipper called McGucket. He said that no graffiti had appeared there. They were keeping Mabel awake to observe her behavior, but she had calmed down some.

"OK," Dipper said. "Last resort." He called Ford.

When he had laid out their dilemma, Ford said, "They'll keep expanding their nest if you don't find it. It must be in the Shack somewhere—at first, their radius of operations is small, focused on the nest. You have to keep trying."

"All right," Dipper said. "We will."

But before starting over, they retreated to recoup.

Down the hill from the Shack, in a clearing of its own, stood Stanley and Sheila's new house, not yet finished. But it had a roof, walls, and doors. They went there, carrying a lantern (no electricity yet) and huddled on the bare floor in front of an empty fireplace.

Dipper held up the lantern and looked around. "No graffiti here. Ford's right. It's gotta be in the Shack! What did we miss?"

"I feel so stupid," Wendy moaned. "I'm no help to you!"

"That's them getting to you," Dipper warned. "I'm supposed to be the smart guy. But I'm such a dummy—what's the answer? There must be a hiding place I haven't thought of! It's me that's stupid—"

Wendy shut him up with a kiss.

Together we're bigger than it is, Dipper.

—Teach me something.

What, dude?

—I don't know. Wait, give me what you know about fixing cars! Anything! Everything!

Uh, OK. Here it comes.

And as though it had been in his mind and he'd only forgotten it temporarily, the knowledge poured in. As if he'd always known, he now could tell the difference between—and operate—manual transmissions, automatic transmissions (he knew how to operate this one already, but now he understood all the components and how they worked together), CVT's, and hybrid dual/clutch versions. He could have stripped down and reassembled an engine. He knew about old-fashioned distributors and fuel injection, about three varieties of ignition systems, about—well, it felt like about everything.

He took a deep breath. "That centered me," he said. "Thanks, Wendy. OK, I'm not so unsteady now. Let's go back and this time—really look!"

They decided to hold hands as they searched. Maybe not so oddly, that helped. A lot. Their touch-telepathy seemed to baffle the drolls—messages like DIPPER HAS NO TITS or WENDY'S TOO YOUNG TO SHAVE only made them giggle.

They went through everything again. Same story as before: nothing.

Then Dipper thought to Wendy, —Where's the last place they think we would look?

Dunno, man. I mean, we even checked out the roof!

Slippery and icy though it was, they had—Soos had re-shingled the roof, but he'd also replanted patches of moss, and as always, the roof collected sheaves of pine needles. Dipper had thought that the nest might be disguised as one of those, but in the glow of the floodlights over the MYSTERY HACK sign, he and Wendy dislodged them all, every last one, and tossed them to the ground. Then they climbed down and made a visual inspection beneath all the eaves and on the porch beams. No nest.

But though their touch dulled the assault, they could still feel it—the invisible creatures were trying to force a way into their minds. And each could tell the other was slowly losing ground.

At two in the morning, they collapsed on the floor of the parlor. "This is stupid!" Dipper muttered as the wall replied NO YOUR STUPID.

"Can't even spell," Wendy snarled.

"OK, let me think. Let's go downstairs and get a couple of Great-Uncle Ford's anomaly detectors. Maybe the nest will register on that."

It was a good idea. It would have been brilliant, had it worked.

Well—it worked to a very limited degree. It showed that something anomalous was indeed going on in the Shack (thanks a heap, Grunkle Ford), but the detectors couldn't absolutely localize the effects.

The readings were stronger in the living room, though. "Gotta be here somewhere," Dipper muttered. They turned over the sofa and stripped the bottom cloth. Not in there. They'd looked in the big fish tank. Nothing. They'd taken down the cat and owl clocks and looked behind them, along with every other piece of art or mirror on the walls. Nothing.

They'd opened Grunkle Stan's old safe. Business records and a moderate stash of cash that Soos kept there for emergencies. No nest. They'd taken up the loose floorboard in the gift shop. Ramirez family photos, for some reason. One or two old expired arrest warrants for Stan.

Back to the living room, back to the floor, and they huddled under a red blanket, feeling the early beginnings of panic. What haven't we thought of, Dipper?

—I'm getting too tired to think.

Dipper stared moodily at the unlit fire that Wendy had laid but not started in the fireplace.

Wendy caught his thought and responded, Dude! I didn't do that!

—Don't tell me—!

Using the poker, Dipper knocked aside the tent of white pine kindling. Beneath it he didn't find the expected crumple of newspaper and dry leaves, as he would have expected, but a soccer-ball-sized conglomeration of twigs, pine needles, and odds and ends—some of the red yarn Mabel had left behind, one of Dipper's old socks that he must have missed last time he packed to go home to Piedmont, and—

—Dude, that's one of my bras!

Dipper grabbed a box of long fireplace matches and struck one. He held it out to ignite the droll nest—

The flame flickered and went out. And the next, and the next, and though he tried not to read the hateful messages that now streamed onto all the walls, Dipper felt woozy. "Hold onto me," he said. "They're getting to me!"

He felt Wendy's palm on the back of his neck. Take it out to the parking lot, dude! We'll soak it with gas!

—Together!

They grabbed the nest and, like two basketball players fighting for possession, took it through the gift shop. Wendy freed a hand to open the door, and they stepped out into the cold night—bitterly cold but mercifully dry, with hard stars shining overhead.

They moved the ball to the center of the parking lot and dropped it.

"OK," Dipper said. "Get the gas, Wendy!"

And with a bone-chilling grin, Wendy said, "What makes you think I'm Wendy?"