That Day in May
(April-May 2018)
12-Night of the Witch
Nobody liked Stan's plan. Ford thought it was too dangerous, Dipper said that if Ford's theory were correct and they tried something like Stan suggested, they could all be killed, and Wendy said, "I hate it. But let's go for it!"
"There you go," Stan said. "You're outvoted!
Ford said, "No, mathematically, two against two—"
"I'll stand with Wendy," Dipper said.
Stanley raised his eyebrows and gave his brother a knowing grin.
Ford shook his head and gave up. "Very well. It's clear to me that we have to do something soon, and I can offer no better course of action. But before we try what Stanley has in mind, we need to gain some understanding of what she's up to in there. That means trying to spy on her, yet no one should go in by way of the Museum door or the gift-shop door. And even if one of us does somehow get into the house undetected, there's still no way of getting close and seeing her."
"Yeah, her mental voodoo is somethin' else," Stan said.
"I think I might have something," Dipper said. "What if we enter through the new wing? It might be out of her range, because we'd have to go all the way down the hall, turn left, then turn right, then go into the gift shop and then through the door of the Museum—"
Wendy nodded. "That door should be far enough away from the Museum so her mojo doesn't scramble our brains. She might not even know we're there."
"You might be relatively safe at first," Ford said reluctantly. "But in the end, approaching and entering her place of power is simply too risky—even for the two of you. You're resistant to her powers, but not invulnerable."
"What if we don't have to go into the Museum at all?" Dipper asked.
Ford gave him a puzzled glance. "Then no purpose is served."
"Let's get a few things and then go up the hill," Dipper said. "I'll explain on the way. This might or might not work, but we have to try it."
At the Shack, barely inside the protection of the anti-weirdness power dome, the end door led straight into the wing that Soos had built on for Abuelita's room and the nursery and a small bedroom (Little Soos's now) with a half-bath. The half-bath and small room was closest to the exit, and the bathroom was the one that Dipper and Wendy went into. "Let me unscrew the grill," Wendy said, kneeling just inside the door and taking a short flat-edge screwdriver, borrowed from Stan, out of her jeans pocket.
"Quietly," Dipper warned, his hand beneath her hair and on her neck, maintaining their telepathic contact.
"Yeah, I will be." Working quickly and silently, Wendy loosened and removed four long wood screws. "What's the dude's name? I never can remember."
"Hang onto my wrist," Dipper said, crouching beside her. "Just in case she tries to, uh, smite us or whatever." Leaning until his mouth was only an inch away from the air duct, he softly called, "Wax head of Larry King! We need you."
For some seconds nothing happened. Then Dipper heard distant thumps, the bouncing noise somewhere inside the ducts made by the disembodied head, the only survivor, if you could call it that, of the Mystery Shack Wax Museum. Even Mabel's masterful wax effigy of Stan had unfortunately melted during the hottest days of that summer of 2012. The head alone had survived the heat wave by going down to the lowest level and hanging out in the air duct of Ford's lab, level 3. It was cooler there.
The bouncing grew louder, and then the head, a little dusty but energetic, came into view. "New developments in the unfolding story of the Mystery Shack," the head said. "A machine in the Museum is rebuilding itself. Fascinating if true. What are your views on the subject?"
"That's up to you, wax head of Larry King," Dipper said. "The machine's an automaton."
"Automaton!" the head repeated. "For the benefit of those who have never heard the term, an automaton is an artificial human figure, which moves and responds in a lifelike manner by the operation of clockwork!"
" . . . yeah," Dipper said. "We need to spy on the automaton. If I give you a small camera—" he held it up—"could you safely wedge it in one of the air vents that have a view of the Witch? The Witch is the automaton."
"Exclusive candid footage of an unholy machine," the head said. "If I can carry it, I can place it! She pays no attention to me. Is that because I'm not human, or because she's allergic to wax? Let's find out. First, though, you could assist me by removing and cleaning my glasses!"
"Here, I got 'em." Wendy reached in with her free hand and removed his spectacles. "Just a sec."
While Dipper got up and shifted his touch back to her neck, she stood and washed the glasses in the sink, then dried them and polished them with toilet paper. She and Dipper knelt on the tile floor again and Wendy replaced the glasses.
"Careful," the wax head said. "That right ear is a little wobbly ever since I retrieved it from the rat who stole it."
"Huh?" Dipper asked.
"Yes! A rat stole my ear and refused to grant an interview! But I managed to persuade a Gnome to hunt the rat down, eat it, and return my stolen lobe. The Gnome was working on a book, and he wanted me to do an in-depth conversation with him in exchange for my ear, which he kindly reattached. It was an intriguing exchange regarding unknown episodes from the lives of the Pines family, sure to be a fascinating book."
"What book?" Dipper asked.
"Dude," Wendy said, "we're in a hurry."
"It's a collection of untold stories of the Mystery Shack!" the wax head said. "The Gnome is Shmebulock. The interview is a full half hour of him saying that one word over and over. He was very pleased with the result. That's much better, Wendy. Thank you! Now about that camera—is it small?"
"Uh, yes, it is," Dipper said. The spy camera was a cube, only one inch on a side. It weighed next to nothing. However—the wax head had no arms, legs, or body, for that matter. "Now, how can you hold it?"
"Maybe put it in a head band," Wendy said.
"Better idea, I'll clench it between my perfect teeth!" the head said. "Show me how to point it, give it to me, then stay tuned for further developments!"
"Before I do," Dipper said, "promise me that once you've set up the camera, you'll get as far away from the Museum room as you can. Go way down into the lab levels, OK? Hide there until you're sure the automaton's out of the house."
"I understand and will gladly move to that new area," the head said. Dipper switched the small digital camera on and made sure the microphone was also powered. The head opened its mouth, baring its teeth, and Dipper held the little spy camera until it bit down on the device and then hopped away.
Wendy thought to him, Let's get out, Dip. Don't say anything out loud. I'm getting what Soos calls creep-o vibes.
—Me, too. Let's go now.
It was the strangest sensation. You've probably had the uneasy feeling, when all alone, out in the forest or stopped at a red light or walking along by yourself or even simply lying in bed at night, that someone is, you know looking at you. Just silently, intently, and with evil intent, staring at you.
That's what they both felt—except they knew the Witch might have sensed their presence somehow and was not looking with her weird purple eyes, but with her even weirder mind.
The two of them, still holding hands, got out of the house and out of the barrier. "Done," Dipper told Ford. "See if you can connect."
The sun had set, and twilight was closing in. Ford, pale and tense, sat at a shaded picnic table, a laptop open and running. "Just a second."
He clicked some keys, and then the screen blurred and resolved into a dark view of the Museum shot from high in a wall, looking down. "Getting a good signal. I'm adjusting to widen the angle and adjust the aperture for a brighter picture."
"What are we seein'?" Stanley asked standing behind his brother and looking over his shoulder. "Oh, that's the Witch, huh? What the heck has she done?"
The figure was tottery, inhuman, and moving on the floor. It did not seem at all aware of the camera but reeled and wobbled as it rummaged in a pile of debris.
"The cord's not plugged in," Dipper said.
"She's disconnected it," Ford said. "She has some source of power. I don't know what it is, though. Something paranormal, no doubt."
"Hey!" Stan yelled. "She unassembled my Sascrotch! That's its bones!"
"They're not bone, but wood," Ford corrected. "Just thick dowels."
"Yeah, but that's what it uses for bones. Aw, for crying out loud—there's its skin, that furry pile against the wall! What the heck—wait, what's all that junk in the back?"
Ford leaned close to the screen, surveying the clutter. "The boards are the remnants of the wooden cabinet. She seems to have rearranged all the rods and struts, cogs and springs, of the metal parts. I think she's building a leg."
"She has three already," Wendy said.
Dipper couldn't see every detail, but now it looked as if the Witch, from the waist up, had somehow regrown or rebuilt the damaged arm. Now its hands moved smoothly, like those unconvincing robots of the Presidents you see in Anaheim and Orlando. It was trying to build itself a fourth leg—if she finished it, her torso, arms, and head would stand upright on a square wooden platform—a panel from the bottom cabinet—with a leg at each corner. The three she had constructed were quadruple-jointed, like the legs of a crustacean, and the ended not in feet but in sharp points.
"Gonna be like she's ridin' on the back of a big spider," Stan said. "Half a spider, anyhow."
It took her fifteen minutes, but then she rose and experimentally moved across the floor, skittery and jerky. The legs were not all the same size, but they worked enough for her to walk, after a fashion. "She's got the magicky cards, look," Stan said.
"Extraordinary," Ford murmured. "She's attached the wooden box to the base, and the deck is in the box. It's like a wooden pocket."
"She must be left-handed," Stan said. "'Cause it's on the left side of that platform, where she can grab the cards quick."
"The right hand is badly reconstructed," Ford said. "That's the one that Wendy chopped, I think."
"I saw it sort of growing back," Dipper said. "It's bone and skin—I think."
"There must have been some, um, some relics of the Witch's body in the mix," Ford said. "I was aware of the possibility but thought only the hair and the preserved skin might have been human. The organic material must be leftovers. Not that the entity originally had a human body—like Bill Cipher, in the very beginning she was a disembodied force, with just enough reality to drape her nothingness in black to give it a shape. But she did, reportedly possess a fair number of humans—ugh. The thought of the clockwork maker putting human bones into the automaton—"
"Her eyes are so weird," Wendy said.
On the screen, whenever the Witch glanced around, possibly looking for more components, the eyes flashed purple, with an unearthly glow.
"They ain't human, are they?" Stan asked.
"No," Ford said. "I saw creatures with eyes like that in some of the worst dimensions I visited. And in the Nightmare Realm. Those are condensed from—it's hard to express—from distilled hatred, I guess you'd say. The creatures that have them see in a different spectrum from us. Our world must appear dark and foggy to her—"
"She wanted my eyes," Wendy said.
"That's sick!" Stan said.
"If she can entrap a human," Ford told him, "She'll go for the eyes first. Remember how Bill Cipher's eye was his weak point? Eyes are very difficult to do."
"Uh-oh," Wendy said. "I think she's leaving the Museum! I can't see anything but her elbows, but it sure looks like she's trying to figure out how to use the doorknob."
"She'll have to find out how to unlock the door, too," Dipper said.
With a clatter that the small camera's microphone picked up, the Witch retreated from the door, took out the deck of cards, shuffled it, and then drew one card and pointed it at the door.
"Whoa!" Dipper yelled. A blinding streak of lightning, purple, had shot from the card. Simultaneously he heard an echoing boom, not from the laptop but from within the Shack.
"The Tower," Ford murmured. "She drew the Tower. That's the one with the lightning."
"What'd she do?" Stan asked. "Bust the door down?"
The Witch replaced the cards in the box and scrambled forward. She vanished. They could see a dusty drift, or maybe smoke.
Dipper said, "I think maybe she blasted the door off its hinges."
"I'll sue!" Stan said. "Fixin' that door will cost a hundred—a thousand—a hundred thousand dollars! Lady, I hope you got liability insurance!"
"I think," Wendy said, "she's in the gift shop now. Probably heading for the front door."
"Which isn't locked," Dipper said.
"We need to get in place," Ford said. "Then I'll deactivate the protective unicorn-hair spell, temporarily at least."
"Fix it so you can start it up fast if we gotta run away from her," Stan said.
"OK, it's getting dark now," Wendy said. "Before full night comes, I say we ought to go there and meet her. And then we can try Stan's plan and see if we got a chance."
"Yeah!" Stan said. "Let's go!"
"Heaven help us," Ford murmured.