A/N This chapter has been slightly edited, so don't be surprised that it's been re-uploaded. Thanks again to everyone who reads and reviews!
Chapter 11: Headhunters: Case Closed
With his left hand outstretched, Sherlock Holmes showed himself to be the murderer. Even though he wasn't holding the ax, he was still terrifying. I mean, he's a talking, walking, murdering wax figure for crying out loud!
"Bravo, Dipper Pines," addressed Holmes, removing a smoke pipe from his mouth. "You discovered our little secret." He removed Wax Stan's head from inside his coat. He then turned to face the wax figures behind him. "Applaud, everyone! Applaud sarcastically." The wax figures obeyed him, sort of. "Ah, no, that sounds too sincere. Slow clap." The crowd clapped slower. "There we go. Nice and condescending."
"But, how is this possible?" asked Dipper incredulous."You're made of wax!"
"Are you magic?" asked Mabel mystified. Oh, how her sweet little heart could possibly hope.
"Are we magic?" laughed Holmes. He turned to glance back at his cohorts. "She wants to know if we're magic." Unprovoked, he aggressively slammed his right fist on the coffin behind the twins.
"We're cursed!"
"Cursed," echoed the other wax figures. "Cursed." Lavey began to play haunting music from the organ.
"Cursed to come to life whenever the moon is waxing," elaborated Holmes, who turned away from us. "Your uncle bought us many years ago at a garage sale."
Coolio jumped in. "A haunted garage sale, son!"
The wax figures flashbacked to the day that Stan bought them, by a man who owned an ancient house with that was surrounded by a cemetery. Stan was with the owner checking out some wax figures stored in a garage.
"I must warn you," the owner told Stan, wiping sweat off his brow, "these statues come at a terrible price." In response, Stan looked at the price tag attached to Sherlock Holmes.
"Twenty dollars?! Eh, I'll just take 'em when you're not lookin'."
"What?"
"I said I was gonna rob ya."
"And so, the Mystery Shack Wax Collection was born," said Holmes as he remembered. "By day, we would be the playthings of man."
"But when your uncle went to sleep," added Coolio. "We would rule the night." They thought back to when they would stay up at night, hanging out in Stan's home, and playing pranks on him while he slept.
"It was a charmed life for us cursed beings," continued Holmes. "That is until your uncle closed up shop." His voice was dripping with contempt.
After years of renovation and dust, the room was finally rediscovered when Soos came across the fallen doorknob that opened the door to the room that stored the cursed statues.
"We've been waiting ten years to get our revenge on Stan for locking us away." Holmes recalled the moment when he held Lizzie Borden's ax left-handed, and swung at Wax Stan's head. He dropped the ax behind the chair, and grabbed the chopped head. "But we got the wrong guy." He heard Stan returning to the room, and beat a hasty retreat.
"So you were trying to murder Grunkle Stan for real?" asked Dipper with unabridged horror.
"And the cops thought I was crazy!" I cried. I was still terrified, but now I was angry as well. Stan was no saint, but he didn't deserve to die. How dare they threaten us!
"You guys were right all along," said Mabel. "Wax people are creepy, and evil!"
"Enough!" shouted Holmes. He had been staring into the blazing fireplace as he spoke, but turned back to address us. "Now that you know our secret, you must die." His eyes rolled back into his head, and the other wax figures around him had followed suit. They approached us, moaning like zombies thirsty for blood. As Wax Lavey played a dirge, we backed away into the refreshments table.
I prayed desperately like a cartoon character awaiting her demise. "God, save us! God, save us! Godsaveus!Godsaveus!"
"What do we do? What do we do?!" shrieked Mabel fearfully.
"I don't know!" replied her brother. He glanced behind him at the refreshments table, grabbed some items, and threw them at the wax mob. Mabel and I followed suit, throwing napkins, plasticware, cups, cookies. Nothing had any affect, until Dipper grabbed the coffee, and threw it at Wax Genghis Khan, who screamed and backed away as his face melted from the hot beverage.
"That's it!" cried Mabel. "We can melt them with hotty melty things!" The two of them grabbed the battery powered candles lit on the table, while I grabbed the poker by the fire, and we held them out like light sabers, daring the cursed figures to come at us. The wax figures backed away fast, gasping in fear. My, how the tables had turned.
"Anyone move, and we'll melt you into candles!" threatened Dipper.
"Decorative candles," added Mabel in the same threatening tone.
"You really think you can defeat us?" scoffed Holmes.
The twins had rather uncertain replies.
"It's worth a shot, I guess."
"Eeehhh, I don't know. I'm not really sure."
"Fourteen against three doesn't sound like fair odds," I replied. Maybe this will be like Gideon against the Midianites. I was afraid of these wicked monsters, but I tried hard to steady my drumming heart. I knew Who's side I was fighting for, and Who was looking out for us.
"Then so be it," said Holmes. "Attack!"
His cohorts followed his order, and charged.
Wax Lizzie Borden swung her ax at Mabel, but she ducked. Wax Borden missed and loped off Wax Robin Hood's head instead. Mabel kept her candle trained on her, but when Wax Shakespeare sneaked up behind her, she swung her hot electric candle and his arms were half melted, half chopped off. She pointed the candle at him, and he ran. One of his wax arms flew up and grabbed Mabel by the neck. She dropped her candle weapon, and choking, stumbled by the door. Desperate for air, she opened the door, and slammed it repeatedly on the hand's fingers.
I stuck my poker in the fire to reheat it, but Wax Edgar Allen Poe was approaching towards me, looking like he wanted to seal me up inside a wall to die. I pulled out my poker, and jabbed his eye. He screamed, yelling "Augh! Don't let the crazy guy murder me! My eye isn't evil!" and ran around in circles, until I sliced the poker across his legs, and he fell. His feet kept running confusedly around the room.
Wax Queen Elizabeth II charged me next. I said to her, "Pardon me, your Highness!" ducked beside her, and then shoved her into Wax Lizzie Borden, and the two women tripped and somersaulted about. Lizzie Borden furiously sliced at me, by accidentally sliced Poe's head with it.
"'Nevermore'," I quoted.
"Interview this, Larry King!" shouted Dipper, slicing that statue's head off with his candle. "My neck!" cried Wax Larry King. "My beautiful neck!"
Wax Groucho Marx tried to grab the candle, but his hand melted as soon he touched the fake flame. "Joke's on you, Groucho!" Dipper sliced him in half. "I've heard about a cutting remark, but this is ridiculous," replied Wax Groucho, holding an air cigar as his upper half slid off. "Hey, why is there nothing in my hand?" Dipper smirked with triumph. But not for long.
Wax Genghis Khan charged at him, roaring, his face melted in rage. Dipper leaped out of the way, and Wax Khan ran into the burning fireplace, and splashed into a wax puddle on contact. "Ha, Genghis Khan!" laughed Dipper. "You fell harder than the...uh, I don't know, uh, Qing Dynasty? Heh. Yeah. All right." He picked himself up and hurried to save himself and us from the rest of the creepy evil figures.
Mabel was holding her own pretty well. She had Wax Coolio's decapitated head by one of his stringy dreadlocks and was swinging it around like a sling as wax statues tried to surround her. Coolio's head whacked painfully into their faces, while he said "Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!" The wax figures collapsed from Mabel's blows. This fight was really gruesome.
"Wassup with that?" Coolio's head asked Mabel when she ceased spinning him.
"Dipper, watch out!" called Mabel.
Dipper saw Wax Richard Nixon and kicked him out the door, breaking his wax leg as he hobbled out. Wax Sherlock Holmes approached Dipper, holding Wax Stan's lifeless head. He placed on the horn of a rhino's head that was mounted on the wall.
"All right," he said, "Let's get this taken cared of." He removed a mounted sword that was right next to the rhino head on the wall, and deftly swiped the candle out of Dipper's grasp. It clattered to the floor, and cracked into pieces, rendering itself useless.
Holmes raised the sword to slay Dipper, but I yelled "Catch!" tossing Dipper the reheated fire poker. He caught it, and parried the sword before it could slice his forehead. Holmes and Dipper backed into the hallway as they fought, and then up the stairs to the attic room. Dipper swiped at Holmes but he saw the attack coming, and avoided it. Dipper was then backed into a corner, and Holmes held his blade, ready to strike.
"Once your family is out of the way," Holmes told him, "we'll rule the night once again." He raised his sword for a fatal down stroke. Dipper looked for an escape, and his eyes fell upon the red stained-glass window. Holmes ran up to Dipper and brought his sword down.
"Don't count on it!" replied Dipper, leaping between Holmes legs, somersaulting, then opening the window and running onto the roof. Holmes had his sword lodged into the wall, but pulled it free, calling after him, "Come back here, you brat!" He climbed out after him.
Outside, the sky was turning red, and the moon was a pale sickle smiling down on all the unfolding drama.
Dipper climbed up the slope of the roof, and further on until he was walking along the "Shack" sign. He balanced himself precariously, and turned to face Holmes, who had followed him up. The two of them crossed blade and poker under the sign lights. Holmes mistakenly hit the "S" in Shack, causing it to be dislodged and fall off again.
"You really think you can outwit me, boy?" asked Holmes with a tone of condescension. "I'm Sherlock bleeding Holmes! Have you seen my magnifying glass? It's enormous!"
Dipper ignored the egomaniac, dropping the poker, leaped unto the "Mystery" sign above him, and crawled over onto the other side. He jumped off onto the opposite slope of the roof, but caused the roof tiles under him to loosen and slide down, along with him. He reached for the dormer of the Wax Museum room, clambered unto it, and hid behind the chimney, breathless.
He took several breathes, then peeked around the corner of the chimney. There wasn't a sign of the wax detective anywhere. Dipper sighed with relief... until he looked in front of him.
"Ha!"Holmes kicked him in the stomach across the dormer, and aimed his sword at Dipper's face. "Any last words?" He raised the blade above his head, poised to slay Dipper where he lay.
"Um..." Dipper glanced to the east, thinking of a good response. "You got any sunscreen?"
"Got any... what?" Holmes hands were dripping profusely, and he gasped in horror at the rising sun that was rapidly diminishing him. "No," he replied to Dipper.
"You know, letting me lead you outside," mentioned Dipper. "Probably not your sharpest decision."
"Outsmarted by a child in short pants? NOOOOOOOO!" he wailed as he melted helplessly in the morning sunlight. "Fiddlesticks! Humbugs! Its a total kerfuffle! What a hullabaloo." The puddle of his wax body dribbled down the roof.
"Case closed!" said Dipper, brushing dust from his hands. The dust got in his nose, and he let out another cute sneeze.
"HA HA HA!" laughed Sherlock Holmes. "You sneeze like a kitten. Those policemen were right, you're adorable. Adorableeeeeeee!" his half-melted head slid off the roof, and fell with a splat.
"Eh, ewww," commented Dipper. And that was the final end of Sherlock Holmes.
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Meanwhile, Mabel and I were trying to fend off the rest of the wicked wax monsters. Wax Robin Hood tried to nail me with an arrow, but I tossed a chair at him, and he crumbled into waxy bits. Mabel was fighting back now against Wax Queen Elizabeth II, trying to wrestle her captured hair from her white gloved hands. I grabbed one of Coolio's chopped legs, and, doing away with manners, whacked her crowned head off into the hungry fire. Mabel then grabbed her hair and pulled it and the monarch's arms off.
Shakespeare was trying to get his arms back on, but I picked up an ash shovel by the fireplace, and walked over to him, saying "I would challenge you to a battle of wits,"- and I knocked his arms away- "but I see you are 'unarmed.'"
"You wench!" he cried, charging at me. I promptly chopped his head off. "Sheesh, you don't need to lose your head."
Richard Nixon had managed to crawl his way back into the room, and ran at Mabel. I stopped him by slapping his flapping jowls with the shovel. He tripped into Wax Lizzie Borden, and Mabel then sent them rolling into the fire. Unexpectedly, Wax John Wilkes Booth made an appearance, holding a pistol in his left hand.
"Are all of you wax figures left-handed?" I asked.
"It comes with the territory," he replied. He pointed his gun at me, but Mabel sliced her candle across in his neck, and his head rolled off.
"Not much fun being assassinated, now is it, Booth?" I goaded.
Mabel screamed as Wax Thomas Edison swung Lizzie's ax at her. She ducked, and tried to melt him with her candle, but he brought the ax down and sliced it in half.
"Who's brilliant idea was it to give these wax monstrosities real weapons in the first place?" I asked, grabbing a nearby curtain, and throwing it over his head. Confused, he ran about the room, running into a wall, screaming "Who turned out the light bulbs? They're a genius idea! Genius, I tell you!"
"That's it!" With a slam on the keyboard of the organ, Wax Anton Lavey got up, and stalked across the room towards me, grabbing the discarded ax as he did. "You've played with us long enough, girls. Now it's my turn."
Then Wax Edison pulled the curtain off, and threw it aside, with a look of renewed anger in his pupiless eyes.
I had to make a life or death decision, and I didn't like my options. God be with me.
"Mabel, I'll take the Satanist, you take the inventor," I said, grabbing a pair of log tongs. With it and the ash shovel in both hands, I stuck them into the fire to heat.
"You actually think you have a chance against a cursed being?" he laughed.
"I don't think; I believe," I said, trying to put up a brave front, even though my mind and heart were screaming Run!Run!Run! I pulled the metal tools red-hot from the flames.
"So you say," he answered me. He rolled his eyes back in his head and charged at me. He raised the ax and swung at me. I barely missed leaping out of the way. I tried smack him with the shovel, but he parried it with the ax handle. Mabel meanwhile was being attacked not only by Wax Edison but also by various sliced limbs. One grabbed her hair, another grabbed her ankle, she punched one that flew into her face, and stepped on another one.
Then Lavey had me up against a wall. "Pray time's over, Christian. It's too bad that you can't defend yourself,"- he raised the ax above his head- "since you can only use"-he swung down- "you're right ha-!" He gasped in shock.
Barely a few inches from my blonde forehead, I held the ax at bay with the tongs in my left hand, and had managed to stab the hot shovel into his melting chest with my right hand. I braced my back against the wall, holding him back with all the strength I had.
"Impossible!" he cried.
Mabel was confused. "Isannah? But I thought you were right handed!" Mabel saw Robin Hood's head hopping towards her, and she kicked him away.
"You're ambidextrous?" exclaimed Lavey.
"And I'm gonna kick your wax!" I used the tongs to wrench the deadly weapon from his hands, and threw it across the room. "Don't you know how I defend myself? The Lord is my strength and my defense. He is my salvation!" There was no way that I could be that fast without some divine intervention.
"Oh, how touching." Lavey pulled the shovel from my hands, and removed it from his torso. I glanced over at Mabel to see how she was holding out, when Wax Thomas Edison was trying to grab her head. I grabbed Wax Shakespeare's head, and rolled it like a bowling ball at his feet. The American inventing wax imposter fell over like a tall pin.
"Isannah! Look out!" cried Mabel.
I turned just in time to catch Lavey's attack with the tongs and prevent him from hitting my head. He grabbed some wet wax lying on the floor and refilled it into the gap in his belly. He was rebuilding his defenses.
"You Christians all make me sick," said Lavey, swinging the shovel. I tried to parry and lunge with the tongs, but they were more awkward of a weapon than I had thought.
"With all your self delusions of some higher power protecting you, and your so-called ancient 'words of wisdom.' You listen to the blather of dead men, and believe in superstitions. People like you are mad!" He aimed for my neck but I ducked. I threw a hopping arm at him, but he batted it away like a baseball.
"Christians are completely reasonable," I replied, swinging the tongs at his legs, but barely scrapping his knees. "We use historical findings and accounts outside of the Bible to back up Scripture, and discovered the law of gravity and other big discoveries."
I found myself being pushed out into the corridor as we argued and swash-buckled. "People like you are all about humanism, right?" I asked him. "Well, when the humanist movement started way back in the Renaissance, guess who started it? The Christians!" I aimed the tongs at his face for emphasis, and smeared his nose.
He waved the shovel at me, and I lost my balance and fell the last two steps down. I scrambled out of the way as Lavey leaped down to crush me. As I backed up into the kitchen, he tried a new tactic.
"You're nothing but thieving hypocrites, trying to coerce finances and support. Oh, how you scoff at us 'sinners.' You claim to be holier than us, better than us, but you're no different than the rest of humankind. And that's what I hate about you the most!"
He threw away the shovel and grabbed a kitchen knife, and threw it at me. I narrowly avoided it, and it got lodged in the wall. With a pounding pulse, I pulled it out, and prepared to defend myself, knife and tongs.
"Christians are no different from the rest of mankind," I agreed. I grabbed a pot lid for a shield as he took up a few more knives, and we circled the kitchen table. I kept praying for a solution as I spoke. "We know we're sinners, and know we can't get into heaven by our acts or attitudes."
"Do you?" he asked snidely. "Do you really?"
"Being a Christian is not all about hypocrisy!" I backed into the stove, and set the tongs mistakenly into turning on the front burner behind me.
"And how would you know that?" He stepped towards me, throwing a knife into the floor between us with each point he made. "You didn't keep the Sabbath, disrespected the authorities, and are murdering creatures that are practically human. Face it, you have laws that you can't keep, and don't even bother to. Sherlock agrees every bit with me. He quoted the portion of the Bible that reveals King David, a man after God's own heart, as an adulterer." He held a steak knife at my face, and had me leaning back over the stove. I felt the burner's heat on the nape of my neck, and realized that my hair could catch fire.
I shuddered, but I couldn't deny his words. I had indeed sinned and broken rules. He didn't even mention allowing under-aged children into a brawling restaurant with fake ID's.
"You're right," I resigned. "I am indeed a hypocrite. I've sinned against God and against man. Even people who we praise about in our Bible are nothing more than sinners."
He smirked devilishly.
"But we remember those stories to remind ourselves of that truth. If God based His love for us solely on keeping rules, there would be no reason for Him to send His Son Jesus Christ for our eternal salvation, to take away our sins and hypocrisies."
He practically hissed at my next words. "Rules and rituals don't take away our sins; Jesus' sacrifice can only do that."
"Your God is dead!" he shouted.
"He came back from the grave, after freeing sinners from hell. The place that you seem so desperate to get to, in all your spitefulness toward God. Ironic, for a wax figure." I could smell my hair singeing from the burner.
"Your faith is weak; you're nothing but weak. Our master will rise in power and conquer over you pathetic, meek Christians."
"Jesus said, 'Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.' And He promised us that Satan wouldn't rule the world forever, but be thrown into the Lake of Fire. Power-hungry, hateful monsters like your master and Holmes will never have a hold on this world!" I swung my burning ponytail into his face. He yelped, backpedaling into the fridge, holding his melting eye. "My face!"
"Put that in your pipes and smoke it!" I licked my finger and thumb, and pressed them over a tiny flame that blossomed on one of my locks.
In a rage of frustration, Lavey leaped at me, a knife poised for my throat. But I ducked, somersaulted at his legs, and he tripped over me, and his face landed directly onto the burner. He screamed, and pulled himself away, but his hands and face were melting into liquid wax. From the open window behind the table, I could see the morning sun rising from the east. As beams of sunlight burned in, he melted, but his voice croaked out a last reply.
"This isn't the end, Isannah Elizabeth Tannenbaum. Worse things are coming to you. Horrors and terrors unimaginable. We'll be back! We won't be silenceeeeeed!" He melted into a bubbling black puddle.
Thank God that's over. I went into the broom closet, and fetched a mop and a bucket.
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Mabel was inside the Wax Museum room, tossing the remains of Wax William Shakespeare into the fireplace turned Nebuchadnezzar's furnace. Wax Shakespeare was swearing his return in rhyme.
"Though our group be left in twain, Man of wax shall rise again!"
Mabel picked up his head last of all. "Do you know any limericks?" she asked him.
"Uh...There once was a du-ude from Kentucky-"
"Nope." She threw him in the flames, and he briefly screamed before being instantly melted. Dipper entered the room, unharmed.
"Dipper! You're okay!" cried Mabel. "You solved the mystery after all." Dipper pulled up a chair to stand on as he removed Wax Stan's head from the mounted rhino's horn.
"I couldn't have done it without the help of my sidekick," he replied.
"No offense Dipper, but you're the sidekick," replied Mabel.
"What? Says who? Are-are people saying that? Have you heard that?"
I walked into the room, tired but grimly triumphant.
"Isannah!" cried Mabel. "You overcame your fear of wax."
"I was just afraid of Anton Lavey," I said, holding up a bucket of his waxy remains. "He's a man of the devil."
"You should burn that," said Dipper.
"Agreed." I threw the contents into the fire.
"Hot Belgian waffles!" Just then, Stan, walked into the war-torn, wax-spotted room. "What happened to my parlor?!" A curtain rod from the window fell down after his exclamation.
"Your wax figures turned out to be evil so we fought them to the death," replied Mabel.
"I decapitated Larry King," mentioned Dipper, as if that would make matters better.
"I mopped the kitchen floor," I added, as if that would make matters better.
"Heh ha!" laughed Stan. "You kids and your imaginations."
I didn't even bother to argue that our story was true. If he wasn't mad that we destroyed one of his attractions, I decided that was a good deal. Besides, we had been up all night, I was coming down off an adrenaline rush, I had a class in a few hours; I didn't feel like going into further explaination.
"On the bright side though," said Dipper, "look at what we found." He tossed Stan his wax twin's head.
"My head! Ha ha! I missed this guy. You done good, kids." Stan smiled appreciatively. "All right, line up for some affectionate noogying."
The twins weren't jumping up and down with excitement on this idea.
"I'm not so sure about that. Is there any other alternative-"
"Oh, um... ah..."
But there great-uncle got them head-locked into a hug, and was already giving Dipper a noogy. The three of them chuckled. "Noogy, noogy, noogy." I started laughing at them myself. Stan glanced at me, gave me a playful shove that knocked me over, and I laughed even more.
But then a police siren broke the short moment of affection. Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland were back.
"Solve the case yet, boy?" called Blubs. "I'm so confident you're gonna say no, that I'm gonna take a long, slow, sip from my cup of coffee." He took the coffee cup to his lips, and started to take a long swig, and his deputy followed suit.
"Actually, the answer is 'yes,'" Dipper said, holding up Wax Stan's missing head.
Blubs appeared to be choking, and spat his coffee all over Durland's face. Durland screamed, then spewed coffee back in Blubs face. Blubs screamed again, and spewed coffee back at him. Durland screamed, and spewed coffee back again.
"It burns! It burns!" Blubs cried.
"My EYES!" screamed Durland. Both screaming in scalded pain, they hit the gas and sped out of the parking lot. We laughed at them as they beat a hasty retreat.
"They got 'scalded!'" said Stan. We heard their vehicle screech and crash.
"So, did you get rid of all the wax figures?" Dipper asked us.
"I am ninety-nine percent sure that we did," she replied.
"Good enough for me," he said.
"And me," I said. "If you need me, I'll be taking a nap and having nightmares before I have to get to class."
But watching from inside an air duct, the decapitated head of Larry King laughed. Until he heard a squeaking sound. "Huh?" There was a rat in the vent with him.
"So, you're a rat," he said. "Tell me about that." The rat promptly tore of his wax ear, and ran down the vent with it.
"Hey! Get back here!" he hopped on his neck after the vermin. "I'm hopping. I'm hopping after a rat that stole my ear."
As I turned to head out of the room, Stan asked, "Sheesh, Iz, what happened to your hair?"
I looked at the end of my ponytail, which lost about two inches to the kitchen stove. "I burned it," I shrugged, then headed to my bedroom for a much needed rest.
I couldn't help but wonder to myself about Lavey's dying vow. What if what he said was true? But what could be worse than what we've gone through? Exhausted, I collapsed on my bed, never truly suspecting for a moment that the Satanic wax monster was more than terrifyingly accurate. Worse things are coming to you.
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Mabel stood in front of mirror in the living room downstairs, trying to decide which sweater to wear for the day. "Hmmm. Hey Dipper," she asked, "what do you think is better? Sequins, or llama hair?"
Wax Larry King's head appeared in an air duct over the comfy chair in the living room. "The llama hair," he said. "Llamas are nature's greatest warriors." He hopped away.
"Thanks, Dipper!" she ran upstairs to put it on.
Dipper meanwhile was reading a Sherlock Holmes mystery, but he looked up and glanced uneasily around the room. He could have sworn that...
But he decided to go back to his reading.
"Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity." -1 Timothy 4:12