Very Last Gig
(August 10-13, 2017)
16: Do You Believe in Magic?
A little before seven on Saturday morning, Dipper woke up. Wendy kissed him softly and whispered, "Shh." She got up, gathered her blankets, and walked quietly back to the bed, her bare feet not making a sound. Through half-opened eyes, Dipper watched his girl quickly spread the covers on her bed (his bed) and then she sat on the edge, stretched, and called out, "Mabel! Dipper! Rise and shine, guys!"
"Nomma gumby neema slee," Mabel said, but Tripper yipped and licked her face until she surrendered. "I'm up, I'm up!" She sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes and yawning. "How was the floor, Brobro?"
Dipper was gathering up his sleeping bag as the air mattress hissed out its filling. "Not bad, Sis. You seemed to sleep well."
"Bad dreams," she muttered. "Don't remember what, just bad. OK, Tripper, I'm gonna let you out! Sheesh!"
Girl and dog stepped and/or leaped over Teek, who was just coming around and Dipper heard them on the stairs. Teek tapped on the door, Wendy said, "Come in, we're decent," and he returned his borrowed sleeping bag and folded blankets. "Guess I'll go home to shower and change clothes," he said. "I'll have breakfast there and be back before nine."
"Great," Dipper said. "See you then."
He and Wendy no longer had many inhibitions about each other, but they took turns in the shower and Dipper came back in jeans but bare-chested in time to help Wendy fasten her bra. "You're pretty good with a hook and eye," she complimented him as she pulled on her work shirt. "But you may need practice in unhooking one."
"Any time," he said. "I'll put on the coffee."
"I'm gonna stash the stuff I brought up here until we get a chance to smuggle it back to my room," Wendy said. "Abuelita won't vacuum in here today, will she?"
"No, Tuesday and Friday for upstairs," he said.
"OK. Be down in a minute."
Dipper looked out in the yard. Tripper and Mabel were playing fetch the stick, and Tripper showed no sign of anxiety. Dipper trusted the dog's instinct for danger. If something was wrong, he would know it. He could hear Harmony laughing and hurried to start the big coffee maker—twelve cups at a time, and most mornings they emptied it and half-filled it again
When did he become such a coffee drinker? Now two cups a day were his normal routine, and he thought he might get in an extra one. He'd slept, but only with fair success, and he didn't exactly feel rested. Melody came in, Little Soos at her heels, telling her something about dinosaurs. In a moment Soos followed her, and then Abuelita with Harmony.
Mabel and the dog came back inside, she calling out, "Why isn't breakfast ready!" in a tone that didn't make it a question.
Wendy came downstairs and said, "There you are, Mabes! I was just checking to see if you were up."
"How about pancakes and sausage?" Dipper asked.
Everybody but Little Soos voted for that, and he wanted oatmabel. In his lingo that meant oatmeal, but only if cooked by Mabel, who put raisins and other goodies in it. She good-naturedly put on the water to boil while Dipper made a big mixing bowl of pancake batter and Wendy went to the snack bar to fire up the big commercial grill. When you made pancakes for the Ramirezes, themselves, and especially Mabel, you needed the space, or it took forever. Soos did the sausage links in the family kitchen.
By 7:30, everyone was at the table, tucking into pancakes or, in Little Soos's case, excavating oatmeal in search of the elusive raisins.
To Dipper's surprise, he heard footsteps in the gift shop—they had not yet unlocked the Shack—and Stanford appeared, sporting a ten o'clock shadow and looking red-eyed. "Good morning," he said. "No, don't get up. All I want is a cup of coffee and perhaps an orange."
"You should eat, Mr. Doctor," Abuelita chided. "Is not good just to eat a naranja for the breakfast."
Stanford chuckled. "Oh, I'm used to it," he said. He did not sit, but leaned against the counter, peeled and ate his orange, and sipped his coffee. He volunteered to help wash up, but Abuelita shooed him away, and Soos helped her wash and dry. "If you've time," Stanford said, "I'd like a word with you."
They went down to his lab—his cot, usually made up with military neatness, showed that he had spent the night down there—and he said, "I have been researching demonology. I have a guess now about whom we might be encountering. It's still not certain, mind, but forewarned is forearmed."
Mabel, who had perched onto a swivel chair backwards, said, "Four arms would be fun! You could sculpt and paint at the same time."
"Yes," Ford said. He swiveled his computer monitor so they could all see. "Suspect number one: This is Ambduscias."
"Aw, man," Mabel groaned. "A unicorn?"
"Looks like a naked man with the head of a unicorn," Wendy said. "Blowing on a trumpet or something?"
"A medieval representation," Stanford said. "I chose him because he is associated with music. In fact, medieval legends name him as the demon in charge of all the music in hell."
"The devil's DJ?" Mabel asked. "I'll bet his music sucks!"
"Yeah, and his horn's very puny, too," Wendy said.
Mabel guffawed and held her hand up. "Up top!"
"Ow! Not so hard, Mabes!"
"May I continue?" Stanford asked with dignity. "This is only one of three. As I say, he does have a musical connection." He tapped the keyboard, and the image changed. "Now, this is Flauros."
"Aww," Mabel said. "He's a man-kitty!"
Dipper said, "I think that's a humanized panther or leopard."
"This fellow," Stanford said, "is often called on by people seeking vengeance."
"I can see why," Wendy said. "A bobcat once got after me and Dad. They're scary when they're mad."
"Did you kill it?" Mabel asked.
"No. She had a den with its cubs inside, and she was just protecting them. Me and Dad just let her think she'd chased us away and she cooled down."
"Kitties!" Mabel said, her eyes huge. "I'll bet they're so cute!"
"If I may," Stanford said patiently. "One last demon. From what I managed to learn of Bratsman from the online sources, his motivation was always profit. Therefore, this is a possibility: Mammon, the demon of wealth."
Five miles away, Damon Bonnar's head twitched.
"Something wrong?" Stanley asked. He stood holding a sheaf of photos, copies of the one showing might-be Bratsman. Stan had assembled the entire Security team as third shift was going off and first coming on, second grumpy because it was too early."
"Nothing," Bonnar said. "Just thought I heard someone call my name."
In the cheap motel room, Wilmer gave up pacing the floor. He could hear Bratsman snoring on the other side of the thin wall.
He had done a lot of things for Bratsman. He had helped cheat promoters out of at least part of their fees. He had witnessed forged documents. He had offered bribes to safety inspectors.
But now—
He couldn't.
He had to.
Sitting on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands, at the exact instant that Stanford had spoken the word "Mammon," for first time since he'd lain stretched out in a sweltering space above a run-down gas-station toilet, watching a good man and his family being rounded up and hauled away, Wilmer Gunzell prayed.
Not much of a prayer. Three words
But they were the important ones.
"God help me."
Love God, who had not slept at all (he did not need to, but usually did because he enjoyed sleeping), sat perched in a tree. He didn't know why. He had just felt like flying in the wee morning hours when no one was around to be startled, and he'd landed sitting sidesaddle on an upper branch of a mighty oak. He just wanted to watch the sun come up, and afterward he lingered there, listening to birdsong and watching a doe and her fawn timidly browsing the grass down below.
His nerves were taut as an over-tuned lyre's strings. He could feel tension building in the air.
Normally that's what a concert like this was good for—it released a whole lot of built-up anxiety, worry, and care. It eased off the tension. Left people feeling a little misty, a little exalted, a lot relaxed.
This time, he sensed, the music alone wasn't going to be enough. Something big, something major, something demonic was building, like storm clouds over the mountains.
One of three things was going to happen.
Divine intervention could stop the storm before it broke. But nobody could arrange a divine intervention. It came unbidden, like sudden mercy.
Or he could fight it out with Mammonus. He didn't want to do that. Mammonus wasn't a bad guy. He was just a demon doing his job. And he was a frenemy. And Love God was not by nature a fighter. Well, obviously not.
Or the building storm could break. It would be a bad one. People who weren't fated to die would die.
And the trouble with a storm in the mountains was not just the terrifying lightning or the earth-shaking thunder, it was the cascade effect. A mountain thunderstorm might cause an avalanche twenty miles away. There could be smoke on the water, rain and fire in the sky.
A demonic intervention, you see, is not common. When one happens, unintended consequences always billow around it in a pyroclastic flow of human suffering.
Maybe because this was Gravity Falls, Love God sensed that any breakout would be terrible. Not end-of-the-world terrible, maybe, but hearts would be broken, souls tarnished.
Of course, there was the fourth option.
Unthinkable, but it was an option.
Should Ergman Bratsman, the instigator of all this, die in an untimely way—
That would be like throwing the emergency brake on a roller coaster.
That could stop it.
But no cherub could take a life. Vengeance, and this was a very clear point, was not his.
And Mammonus wouldn't do it. He might do a lot of things, but breaking a solemn infernal contract was not one of them.
Love God wondered if he might call Mammonus's attention to the one little detail in the contract that might be a way out. He had noticed it and then, thinking it over, had concluded absolutely—maybe it would work.
But, no, just as he could not slay, he could not do this, could not intervene. Could not even hint.
Maybe Mammonus would think of it on his own.
Or maybe not.
And just at that moment, reality twanged, a sour note on a broken lute.
Somebody knew. Somebody had—not invoked, but spoken a demon's name while, and this is important, the demon was in the vicinity.
Like a magic spell, the spoken name reverberated to those who were sensitive.
"Not someone else," Love God groaned. It would be too much for two people to invoke the same demon.
He hoped that wasn't about to happen.
"Whoa!"
The guys of Sev'ral Timez had remade the living room of their mobile home into a dormitory. Creggy G. and Greggy C. slept on one bunk bed, Leggy P. and Chubby Z. on another, and Deep Chris had his own bunk. He had sat up in it and had yelped.
"You, dawg, what time is it, man?" mumbled Chubby Z.
"It's eight o'clock, dig it," said Leggy P. "Too early, man! What yanked your chain, Deep?"
"Nothing I guess," Deep Chris said. "I just had the weirdest feeling. Sort of a shudder, yo!"
Leggy P. turned over and in a sleep-thickened voice, said, "It's nothing, beef. Somebody just walked over your grave, is all."
"That is bogus," said Creggy G. "That is like straight black magic, dawg."
"Do you believe in magic?" asked Greggy C. from the top bunk.
"Guys," pleaded Deep Chris, "just go back to sleep."
Too late for him, though. The earworm had crept in and he lay in bed humming the old song. And hoping that no one would walk over that grave again.