That Day in May
(April-May 2018)
13-Time Goes By
When it's 8:00 PM in California, Mabel had to remind herself constantly, it's already 11:00 PM in Georgia. Too many times she'd had an exciting bit of news, had come bouncing in at ten or eleven at night, had dialed Teek's number to share the good word, and had wakened both Teek and his roommate after they'd been asleep for hours.
Now it was eleven-something, Georgia time, and only eight-something in California. Thinking of that as she and Teek lay in each other's arms, not asleep but cozy in the warmth of being together, set Mabel's train of thought on the tracks of Time. "Four days," she said. "Four more days and Spring Break ends and I gotta go back to Olmsted. Want to come with me?"
"More than anything," Teek said, smoothing her hair away from her cheek. "Only I can't. I have to stay here until school ends in May at GCAF." All the students there didn't call the film school G-C-A-F, as Mabel had been doing, but spoke it as if it were a word, geecaff. "But we'll have the summer together."
"Yeah . . . ." Mabel said. "We'll just have to wait. I hate waiting!"
"Don't get all sad on me," Teek half-teased. "Hey, come on. Don't think of it as 'We only have four days.' Think of it as 'Hey! We have four whole days!'"
"It's been so nice," she said. They had plans already for the rest of their week. Teek had made them. Mabel was still a little allergic to sitting down with a calendar and a notepad. "Will it be this nice after we get married?"
"Nicer," Teek said.
"Oh, hey, I totally forgot! Want to go to that big comic convention in San Diego?"
"I can't afford the ticket!" he said. "But, yeah, I'd love to go. Tons of movie people attend. Good place to make some contacts—even though they'll never remember meeting me."
"They would if I was with you. I'd see to that." After a pause, Mabel added, "Isn't that a good idea?"
"It's an idea," he admitted. "Wait, why are you even talking about this? Did you score tickets somehow?"
"Dipper did! You know the show that's gonna be made from his—"
"Granite Rapids," Teek said. "You told me all about it and sent me art and everything."
"Well, guess where its big public premiere is gonna be!"
"No way!"
"San Diego way! And Dipper's gonna be a guest. And he gets to bring an entourage. I want to be his publicist, but you can be his assistant. You don't have to do any work, though. It's in June—"
"I know when it is!" Teek wasn't being rude, just excited. "Yeah, I'd like to go! Will Dipper be on a panel and all?"
"Yeah, looks like it. And they'll have all the Granite Rapids books there for him to autograph, and we'll get to meet the producer and director and some of the animators and the voice cast. We'll get to see the pilot episode, and they'll have pencil tests—is that what they call them? Pencil tests of some of the other episodes, and maybe some surprises."
"Great!" Teek said. "Will I have to pay for transportation and—"
"Nope! Free ride all the way. We'll get a couple of VIP hotel rooms, or else a suite. Wendy's going, too. And our breakfasts are covered. We get coach seats on flights from Portland to San Diego and back, and guess what? A limo to get us from the airport to the convention!"
"Sounds terrific," Teek said.
Mabel snuggled close to him under the covers and whispered in his ear: "Then thank me properly. You know how!"
And out in Oregon . . .
There comes a time in any plan when the planner begins to think, "Maybe I shouldn't have . . . ."
At Little Big Horn, Custer's thought was "Maybe I shouldn't have ordered my men to surround them."
As he planned his resignation speech, Richard Nixon's was "Why did those jerks have to get themselves caught?"
As he walked out of the Biograph Theatre, John Dillinger's was "I didn't really enjoy that film. Next time, maybe a Laurel and Hardy."
Regrets, we've all had a few, right?
The moment Ford deactivated the unicorn-hair force field, it spectacularly did nothing at all. It only became visible when something malign tried to penetrate it. And so far the Witch was clattering around inside the Shack. They could hear the horrid tic-tac-toc of the mismatched crab-like legs as she scuttled.
Ford, Dipper, and Wendy wished Stanley luck. "Yeah, yeah," he growled. "Go already. I got this. Hey, you think she can even hear?"
"I can't say," Ford admitted. "But try it."
"I'll count to fifty, slow," Stan said. "Go! One potato, two potato, three potato . . .."
By the time he'd counted out at least a grocery shelf stuffed with family-sized bags of chips, Dipper and Wendy, following Ford's direction, had flanked him, each at about a twenty-five degree angle from him, as if they stood on the hands of a giant clock at five past eleven, while he stood on the bolt at the center of the hands. They weren't all that far away from him—about twelve feet each—and both were armed.
"All right," Ford said. "Everyone double-check to make sure you have a full charge."
"Check!" Wendy called.
"Ready!" Dipper said, but he couldn't help wondering Am I? Already he was wishing that he could stand beside Wendy, ready to take her hand, if the Witch hit them with a psychic attack—
They heard Stan from close to the Shack: "Hey! You in there! Witch! How's the ugly business goin'? I got a nickel!"
Three seconds of silence passed.
Then Stan yelled, "Door's openin'! Count to fifteen and then get ready for us!"
Under his breath, Ford began to count: "One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three—"
They heard the pounding of feet. Ford fired up the portable floodlight he'd bungee-corded to a tree. They saw Stanley pounding toward them, running all-out, atypically dressed in a trench coat, its tails flying. "Did it!" he yelled. "I'm duckin'!"
He swerved off the Mystery Trail and dived into some brush.
"Steady . . . steady . . ." Ford said.
Dipper tensed. He could see the Witch, a frightening, crustacean-like thing now, like an extremely ugly fashion doll cut off at the waist and glued to the body of a live crab. She found the ground hard going, stumbling and skidding as she hit little bumps and hollows. Dipper couldn't take his eyes off her. The skeletal head craned up, the nose sniffing, the purple eyes glaring.
He heard Stan say quietly, "Got 'em, Sixer. Where do I stand?"
"A little behind me, about five feet away, to my left. My left, Stanley! You're sure—"
"I got 'em. Hey, Witch! Nyaahh! Ya want a piece of me, you clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous—"
The Witch's eyes flared, she reached to the box at her left side, drew a card, and pointed it straight at Stan.
And—
Nothing happened.
She tried again. And again.
"Hey, only a crazy automaton keeps repeating the same failed thing and expecting a different result!" Stan held up something. "Looking for these?"
The Witch maintained a terrifying silence, but she made a gesture with her mutilated, imperfectly repaired three-fingered right hand, and Ford yelled, "Down, Stanley!"
Stan dropped to his belly. Dipper felt hot hatred—no other term for it—wash over them and for one terrified moment thought, We can't do this! I have to get to Wendy!
He stood his ground.
Ford, visibly staggered by the Witch's attack, nevertheless raised his weapon and fired. He was jerked forward about a foot, then stopped by the rope he'd looped about his waist and tied to a tree ten feet behind him.
But the Witch—
Probably forty per cent steel—
The Witch was caught in the magnetic beam from Ford's weapon. He couldn't move toward her—the anchor rope prevented that—
But she fell forward and tumbled across the grass, arms and legs flailing, cards scattering from her box—
She made not a sound, was probably mute, but Dipper felt her furious scream as she toppled over the rim of the Bottomless Pit.
For an instant, she clung to the edge with two of her bizarre, hooked legs, one made of wood, one of metal.
"I got this!" Wendy, rushing toward the Pit.
Dipper raced around the far edge of the Pit as Wendy struck hard with her axe, splintering the wood, dislodging the metal—
Dipper dived and caught Wendy around the waist before a third flailing leg could stab her, and they fell to the ground.
"Is it gone?" Stan asked. "Ugh. I think I gotta pay for cleaning your spare coat, Ford."
"We have to wait," Ford said. "Everyone, over here."
They joined him. "Everyone OK?" Stanley asked.
"Yeah, now," Wendy said. "For a few seconds there, I was like berserk."
"And I was terrified," Dipper said.
Wendy ruffled his hair, making him feel twelve again. "But you stayed, man."
"Couldn't leave you."
"Yeah, well I wanted to jump in after her and punch her out. I ain't tethered like Ford. You OK, brother?"
"Yes, all right now. I kept imagining how the scenario might go wrong. Mason, kindly start the timer."
"Oh, right."
They all sat on a fallen log. "Cold," Stanley complained, hunching deeper into the coat.
"How did you get them?" Ford asked.
"These?" Stan held up the deck of Tarot cards. "Easy. She came runnin' out, saw you standin' off there in the light, and thought you were me. I came from behind her and—" in the glare of the floodlight, he wriggled his fingers. "Once you've learned how to pick pockets, it's like riding a bike, Sixer. Even when you ain't done it in a long time, you don't fall off so much. I guess we gotta destroy these."
"Yes. They're priceless, but if the Witch gets her hands on them again—"
"She gonna survive that fall?" Wendy asked.
"Difficult to say," Ford told her. "If people fall in, they fall for precisely twenty-two minutes and then are expelled from the Pit again."
"Stan and I have been there," Dipper said.
"Yeah, but if things ain't alive, they never come back out," Stan said. "I musta disposed of a few tons of trash and summonses in the Pit, and none of that ever flew out again. Since she's just a machine—"
"With some human parts, I believe," Ford said.
"I guess it's a toss-up. Hah! See what I did there?" He sighed and said, "When I pinched the cards, I replaced them with a regulation deck. She tried to hex me with the Death card or something, but probably drew like the deuce of spades." He walked over to a stump and bent down to set the Tarot deck on it. "Priceless, huh?"
"Priceless," Ford said.
"Meh. Just another way to say worthless." Stan pulled his destabilizer pistol like Wyatt Earp drawing down on a Clanton. The stump, the cards, and a boulder disintegrated. Well, almost. Most of the boulder remained, with a clean two-foot-diameter circular hole drilled through it. "New attraction," Stan said. "The Kissing Rock. He puts his head and shoulders in one side, she puts hers in on the other side, and if they can manage to kiss, it's true love! Hah!"
"Or two guys," Wendy said. "Or two girls. Let's be up to date on this!"
"Heck," Stan said. "A human and a Gnome! Or—nah, no Manotaur could fit."
It wasn't even that funny, but they all felt an urge to giggle. "This," said Ford, chuckling, "is simply our feeling the euphoria of relief that we're alive. If you three will keep watch, I'm going to re-establish the protective field—"
"Don't you go inside yet!" Stan said.
"No, I'll wait for that. I do want to scan to make sure the Witch left no lingering influence, but—how much time is left, Mason?"
"Eighteen and a half minutes."
"I'll be back in five."
When he returned, he said, "I did a quick scan. Normal Shack readings, which means weird but not too weird. And the protective field is up. If I've miscalculated, everyone run for the Shack when the Witch pops back out."
They waited, too nervous to nod off, though they all needed sleep.
And a little ahead of schedule—Dipper had slipped up and had not started the countdown at the precise moment—a ghastly figure popped up, gibbering and gobbling like a demented turkey.
All the Witch's metal and wooden parts had vanished.
What was left—a skeletal torso, a ribcage, a skull with those purple eyes, wild hair, desiccated skin hard as old leather—flew up and fell back again, flailing and jerking.
Dipper and Stanley caught it in quantum disruptor beams.
Ashes fell as if sucked back into the Bottomless Pit.
"Wait another twenty-two minutes?" Dipper asked.
"That would be safest," Ford said. "I'll remain."
The other three refused to leave him.
They waited it out.
Twenty-two minutes later—
Nothing happened.
"Sometimes plans work out," Ford said, drooping as if all his exhaustion had suddenly fallen on him. "I'm proud of you, Stanley."
"Yeah," his brother said dismissively. "If it has to do with cards, I'm one lucky guy."
"We love you, man," Wendy said.
"Yeah," Dipper added. "We do. Thanks, Grunkle Stan."
"I love you, too, brother," Ford said.
"And I barely tolerate all of you knuckleheads, too," Stan said. "Sheesh! Before we start smoochin' each other, let's go scan the Shack and see what repairs I gotta do before Soos gets back. Then, for God's sake, let's all go home, go to bed, and get some rest."
They didn't see it, because no human eye could, but something still sort of lived inside the Bottomless Pit.
It had no substance, no flesh.
It was mainly malevolence, blended with a sputtering, intermittent self-awareness.
It was . . . an essence.
Not human.
Not organic.
Somehow, and don't ask me or Ford because neither of us knows, that spark of evil intelligence got pulled off the round-trip branch of the Pit and into the infinity branch.
Maybe a day or a million years later, the remnants of the Witch did escape the Pit, but not into our world.
Instead it managed to find its way into the Nightmare Realm, maybe. Or maybe the Land of Lost Things. Or, more likely, into hell.
Whatever.
As Wendy once said as she and Dipper watched the end of a truly awful horror movie—the good guys staked the vampire, exposed it to sunlight, burned it to ashes, encased those ashes in a cube of molten lead, and when that cooled, loaded the lead on a rocket and sent it into the heart of the sun itself—
"That monster ain't coming back no more!"