That Day in May
(April-May 2018)
14-The Cleanup
That night Ford insisted that Wendy and Dipper stay with him and Lorena. And their little dog, too.
Ford's house, like the Shack, had a protective unicorn-hair spell around it (and so did Stan's, just up the hill for that matter, and also the college house where Mabel, Wendy, and Dipper lived. Erecting domes of paranormal power had in a small way become a cottage industry).
Anyway, Ford and Lorena slept in the master suite on the right side of the house as you entered. The guest room Dipper and Wendy selected was on the bottom floor of the house, a walk-out daylight basement. It wasn't quite as large as the more formal guest suite upstairs, but they had each other. Tripper decided to curl up just outside the door—they improvised a doggy bed from a sofa cushion and an old sheet, and he seemed perfectly content.
"Too bad," Wendy said as she slipped between the cool sheets, "that Dr. P. wouldn't even let us go in the house to get a change of clothes or my nightie."
"We'll have to make the best of it," Dipper said, clicking off the bedside lamp and climbing in beside her. The bed was full-sized, not even queen-sized, and it was cool down there, so they had to snuggle remarkably close together.
"Aw, man," Wendy said in mock complaint as Dipper stroked her long, smooth back and caressed the swell of her hip. "It's awful when you have to rough it."
"Not the luxury we're accustomed—ooh!—to," Dipper agreed. "Don't squeeze so hard!"
"Told you we're gonna rough it," she whispered. "Unless you're not . . . up for it. Hmm, feels like you're getting there!"
Outside the door, Tripper's pointy ears perked up, and he raised his head. But then he decided that the yips and moans weren't those of someone in trouble. They were part of the human mating process.
Dogs had it simpler. Mutual sniffing of butts, a short romp, and then on for the ride. Back home, Tripper had a lady friend. She outweighed him by twelve pounds and wasn't exactly domesticated. OK, she was a coyote. Being a very discreet doggy, Tripper had revealed the romance to none of his humans—to that day, Mabel and the others thought he'd been neutered because he'd mastered the art of pulling certain appurtenances back inside the inguinal canal, and even a well-trained vet had been fooled.
He wasn't shooting blanks, though. In February, he had a number of passionate encounters with Miss Coyote, and now—though he hadn't yet learned it—he was the father of three fine, healthy hybrid puppies, coydogs as they're called. It's a word. You can look it up. Anyway, that discovery lay in the future. For the moment, Tripper settled down and listened to Wendy and Dipper sounds—gasps, slaps of flesh on flesh, and urgent murmurs and cries of "Yeah!" "Faster!" "Ahh!" and "Oh, Dipper!" "I love you, Wendy!"
The sounds faded to fast breathing, the small smacks of kisses, and happy sighs.
Tripper settled back down, wondering why the two didn't just howl at the moon and get it over with.
The next day was a busy one. First Ford, Dipper, and Wendy went through the whole Shack, scanning it from Wendy's rooftop hideaway to Ford's secret sub-sub-basement with Ford's most powerful anomaly detectors.
A few bad vibes lingered, but they were psychic residue and were decaying fast. "Fortunately, in this wavelength psychic influences have a half-life of about eighteen hours," Ford told them. "By Friday, the Shack will be back to its usual state. I won't say normal."
Stanley came up and lamented the wreckage. The Sascrotch skin was intact, but the inner armature that supported him lay in pieces on the floor. "The Witch scavenged everything for parts," Ford explained.
"Yeah, she took the Six Pack-a-Lope's antlers!" Stan said. "And the Skull of Modoc!"
"That was not an Amerindian skull," Ford said.
Wendy corrected him: "Nowadays the term is 'Native American,' Dr. P."
"Thank you, Wendy. Anyway, my best guess is the skull belonged to one of those unfortunate lumberjacks killed in the big mudslide back in the 1860s. Better to let it rest as ashes in the Bottomless Pit than to make a show of it."
"Yeah, but visitors want spooky stuff!"
Ford thought a minute. "How about this, Stanley? Through the Institute, I can order a professional replica of a human skull. It's not real, but only a physiologist could tell that."
"How much?" Stan asked.
"I'll donate it to the Museum for free," Ford said.
"Get two," Stan told him.
Wendy and Dipper reassembled the Sascrotch. "You know," Wendy said, "we could do the jackalope, too. you can find deer antlers out in the woods. They shed 'em every winter."
Dipper got an idea and called Tripper in. The Witch had not taken the pair of antlers that hung on the wall in the gift shop. Dipper showed them to Tripper and let him sniff them. "Go find some of these in the woods," he said. "Bring us back some. Understand?"
Tripper did one of his tricks. It looked simple while being profound. He tapped his right front paw on the floor once. Then he wagged his tail.
He was, as far as a dog can do it, talking. The tap said "Yes," the tail-wag said, "Glad to do it!"
They let him out, and he raced down the Mystery Trail.
By noon, they had repaired everything they could. Some damage remained, but nothing that handyman Soos couldn't fix up in a few hours. Speaking of whom, Soos had taken Stan's call with the report. After putting Soos on speaker, Stan had gone through the list of broken or damaged stuff, with the Tarot Witch being number one—"She's gone, Soos, face it. And good riddance."
"Aw, man," Soos said. "I feel so bad about Mr. Braun and all! He didn't know he was sending me a, like, abomination from beyond. And he maybe died because of it."
"Possibly," Ford said. "But since he seems to have left no close family, I suggest we take care of a decent burial for him and let the dead bury the dead."
"Zombies with shovels?" Soos asked, sounding oddly hopeful.
"Ah—no. That means to let the dead go in peace."
"Oh. That's good, too."
Stan said, "We'll take care of it."
They discovered that Tripper had been busy all morning when they heard him out on the gift-shop porch.
"Holy Moley!" Stan said. "We're ass-deep in antlers!"
Not quite that much, but Tripper had proudly fetched back seventeen deer antlers, from two-pointers up to eight. "That's enough, boy!" Dipper said. "You earned a treat!"
Stan selected two antlers that more or less matched—three-pointers both—and with a small hacksaw he trimmed them to the same size, then glued them to the Six Pack-a-Lope's head. "Good as new," he said as the left one fell off.
With heavy rubber bands they reglued and braced it. Wendy and Dipper had a lot of sweeping up to do—the Witch had left loose cogwheels, springs, splinters of wood, nails, screws, and more trash as she had rebuilt herself. And there was the old-fashioned electric cord with its bell-shaped plug.
"Don't trust anything that was hers," Ford warned. They put everything into a medium-sized wooden crate, and then Ford disintegrated it all with a quantum destablizer.
Wendy and Dipper made a late lunch for them all, not forgetting Tripper, and Ford said, "I've missed a lot of time at the Institute. I'm going in for the afternoon."
"When did Soos say they're coming back?" asked Stan.
"Oh, I thought you heard that. They'll be in tomorrow morning, around eleven."
"Good, then me and Soos will get together and see if we can't whomp up a fake fortune-telling witch thing. With a little cabinetry and a beat-up old store mannequin, we can put something together that won't work but will look scary. OK, before you leave, you sure this joint's clean enough for Wendy and Dipper to stay?"
"It's safe," Ford said. "Absolutely."
Stan yawned gigantically. "Then I'm goin' home and sack out. Man needs his rest."
By three o'clock, Wendy and Dipper were alone in the Shack.
They vegged out for a while on the sofa. Then Wendy asked, "How come you keep lookin' at me that way, Dip?"
"The way you're dressed," Dipper said. "Takes me back."
Wendy was in her green plaid flannel shirt, jeans, and boots. "Want me to do the hat thing, too?" she asked with a grin.
"I find it strangely erotic," he said, mimicking Ford.
She shoved him, then tickled him until he begged her to stop.
"Let's play a game," She whispered to him. Her breath smelled like peppermint.
"What . . . kind of game?" he asked, knowing full well she didn't mean Monopoly.
"I'll be the horny cashier at the counter. You be the naughty guy who seduces me while I'm on the job. We'll do it right there on the counter!"
"That sounds pretty naughty."
"Oh, OK, if you don't—"
He started to unbutton her shirt, slowly, one button at a time, kissing her throat in between. "Did I say I didn't want to?"