Future Tense
(July 2018)
17-Collision Course
Gnomes have always had some trouble understanding humans. That may be because in most of the world, humans and Gnomes do not interact—at most, a man reeling home from having a right old good time with his mates at the pub might catch a fleeting moonlit glimpse of a tiny person with a conical red hat dashing across his path and vanishing in the brush. That kind of encounter produces folklore, but little in the way of inter-species understanding.
The first thing a Gnome wonders when encountering an unknown creature is "Can I eat it?" The first thing a human thinks when encountering an unknown creature is "Kill it!"
Only three places in the world have seen anything like cooperation and peaceful coexistence between Gnomes and people. Two of them we don't need to worry about, but the third is, you guessed it, Gravity Falls. Dipper once wrote in Ford's Journal 3, "This journal told me there was no one in Gravity Falls I could trust. But when you battle a hundred gnomes side-by-side with someone, you realize that they've probably always got your back."
A Gnome might have written, "Our Lore tells us there is no human in Gravity Falls we could trust. But when you stand side by side with humans and fight off a demon and all his army and save the world, you realize that some humans probably won't kill and eat you."
Trust is a hard concept for a Gnome to master. However, over the years since Weirdmageddon, little by little the Gnomes of Gravity had come to accept, and be accepted by, Humans. At first the interactions were at best tentative and full of apprehension.
For the life of them Gnomes could not understand why Humans would throw away perfectly good rotten food, just at the peak of piquancy that appealed to one's appetite. More, they could not understand why a Human, having discarded something they obviously did not want, would object when a Gnome took it away to put it to good use. Gnomes liked rats—not as friends, squirrels filled that niche—but as entrees. Humans seemed to despise them, trapping them, shooting them, poisoning them. What the big people didn't want, the wee folk could.
Progress was not exactly slow, not exactly rapid. Months after Weirdmageddon, the Gnomes—who liked Stanley Pines because he had opened the doors of the protected Mystery Shack to them when Bill Cipher was running rampant—worked out a rapport with first Soos, and then later Stan: They would remove all the edible garbage from the Shack at no cost, and they would make sure that the mice and rats that now and then invaded the building (mostly after the first frost of fall) were taken away and humanely disposed of, often in a fennel sauce.
When Stan and Ford returned from their Arctic expedition, Stan, ever the entrepreneur, talked up the Gnomes as pest-control experts and solid-waste managers to others in town, and before you knew it, the Gnomes began to provide service to the other humans in the valley. At first, they did it for a fee split with Stan, one that no one could refuse: Two bucks a month took care of garbage disposal and pest control. As agent, Stan got one dollar, as talent the Gnomes got one.
Eventually the bookkeeping became more bother than it was worth, and Stan turned over the business to the Gnomes entirely. Money wasn't an entirely new concept to them, though they were more comfortable with barter, but they caught on to this new medium of exchange. Things went smoothly, and everyone got along.
Until Punt had showed up in the Valley, Gnomes and humans were on good, friendly, mutually beneficial terms. The big people grew to appreciate the arrangement and they stopped thinking of Gnomes as little evil robbers.
As for Gnomes, they had never thought of themselves as thieves, and they would never knowingly take something of value from a human.
Until now. Two Gnomes, Shale (a former Feral) and Bobo (a Civilized) crept into the Mystery Shack under cover of darkness. Bobo had visited the place often—he was one of the troupe of Dancing Gnomes who entertained five days a week in tourist season—and he led the way up to the attic. Both Gnomes sniffed the air. Lots of Human scents, but none streong. No one was in the bedroom.
The door was shut, and opening it was a gymnastic performance for a couple of Gnomes to reach the knob, but they did it. "Come on," Bobo said. "You know what we're looking for."
They were meticulous. Not even Dipper, who still had paranoid impulses, would suspect they had rummaged through his stuff. The Gnomes found what they had been sent for. Shale asked, "Are we bad if we take this?"
"No. We're not stealing it," Bobo pointed out. "We're just borrowing it indefinitely."
"What's Jeff going to do with it?" Shale wondered. "If anything is a threat, we can just form up—"
"Don't worry about that. We don't need to know. OK, put it on my back. There! Not so heavy. Now you go first down the stairs. Wait, first close the door, quietly. Good. As soon as we get to the edge of the forest, we'll blink to Jeff and give this to him."
"We might get spotted inside the house. There's the dog. I can hear him snuffling."
"He's shut in Mabel's room. Hurry."
They reached the foot of the stairs. "Let's blink now!"
Patiently, Bobo said, "The house is surrounded in a unicorn-hair protective field. If we tried to blink inside it, we'd explode. This way, quick."
Under the pale light of a waxing moon, the Gnomes scuttled across the dew-damp lawn, in the direction of the Bottomless Pit, and just past it, there they weren't any longer.
Though neither Gnome had noticed it, a large black owl perched on the ridge of the Shack roof. It had been watching them intently. When they vanished, both at once, the owl nodded thoughtfully to itself.
Then it resumed its sentinel duty. Waiting. Just waiting.
And, of course, watching.
"Whoa!" Mabel yelped, stamping on the brake pedal. The Focus swerved way over into the wrong lane, barely missing a limousine that had just wrenched in a tight turn from the highway into the Valley, cutting her off.
Teek reached over and helped her with the steering wheel, and when they finally came to a stop, it was in a drift of bluish smoke and the scent of scorched tires. "You OK?" Teek asked.
Gasping, her voice shaky, Mabel replied, "I'm OK. Whoever was driving that bus is a poop head!"
"Want me to drive?"
She shook her head. "Thanks, I got it. Let's drive a couple of miles to that roadside picnic area and I can turn around there. I don't want to pull a U-turn here, it's too hard to see what might be coming."
Teek sounded a bit panicky himself. "Good idea. Take it easy, though. I think that was Mr. Punt's car. Nobody in the Valley drives a Roylls-Rolse."
"Well, he's a poop head and his driver is a poopy double poop head." She made the left turn into the little picnic area. "Think we better check the tires?"
"They feel OK?"
Mabel admitted, "I don't know. I'm kind of shaken up."
So Teek opened the glove compartment and found his emergency flashlight and they got out and did a walk-around. The tires looked all right—no sign of a flat, no hiss of escaping air, anyway—and Mabel let Teek drive back to the turn to the Valley. As they got close, Teek said, "Look on the highway. Skid marks."
"I'm sorry."
Teek hurried to say, "No, no, you were fine! If you hadn't reacted so quick, we would have had a head-on crash."
Mabel grumbled, "Why is he in such a hurry? What put a bug up his—"
"Ask me something I can answer," Teek said. "Who knows? From what I've seen, I think he's half crazy."
"I think you're half right," Mabel said as Teek parked at the curb in front of his family's house, behind Mabel's Rav4. "Here we are. Thanks for going with me, Teek. See you tomorrow." Mabel opened the passenger door, but Teek clasped her upper arm and pulled her back for a kiss.
"I'm going to follow you home," he said.
Nuzzling his cheek, Mabel sighed happily. "Aw, then I'll have to get Grunkle Stan to let me keep you!"
Teek chuckled. "Not such a bad idea. But I want to make sure you get home safely."
"Yeah," Mabel said, "but then you'll have to drive back here to your house, alone."
"I'll be careful," Teek said. "And I'll call you as soon as I get inside my house."
This time Mabel pulled him close. "You better, 'cause I love you. I'm not joking."
"I love you, too." One more kiss. "Now scoot. I'll follow right behind you."
Mabel climbed out, keys in hand, and used the remote entry fob to unlock Black Beauty. Being more cautious than she was usually, or even ever, she opened the back door first, checked the backseat and the cargo area—both empty—before getting behind the wheel. She locked the doors, started the engine, and pulled out carefully, and Teek fell in right behind her.
Gravity Falls is not a large town, and the drive through it and out the far side took only ten minutes, with no traffic to speak of—a few cars visible in the rear-view mirrors back on the town streets as they drove up the slope. As they reached the Shack, Mabel saw that all the lights were on—roof lights, porch lights, windows ablaze, the parking-lot arc lights full on, and high above in the sky cruised the lopsided moon, a few days from full.
Mabel got out of her car, locked it, and jumped with a squeak as someone touched her elbow. "Just me," Teek said. "I'll walk you in."
"Let me find my door key."
Teek steered her toward the gift-shop door. "No need," he said.
Mabel looked up. Dipper stood in the doorway. "I hope nothing's wrong!" she said.
"No, I called him on the way in," Teek said.
"Hi, Sis," Dipper said. "Teek. Come on in."
"I have to go home, thanks," Teek said. "Be sure to lock the door, OK?"
With his face paling, Dipper asked sharply, "What's the matter?"
"Mabel will tell you," Teek said.
Dipper stood aside for Mabel to come in, but she didn't enter right away. "Wait until Teek gets away, Dip."
They watched him start his silver Focus and do a three-point turn to head back toward his own house. "OK," Mabel said. "Lock up."
"What happened?" Dipper asked.
"Nothing, but it almost did. We were coming back from the Institute, and this big-ass limousine nearly crashed into us. I didn't see who was in it, but Teek says it's pukey Punt's car."
"I'm glad you're safe," Dipper said.
"Hey, where are you heading, Brobro?" Mabel asked as Dipper started to punch in the code on the vending machine pad to open the secret door.
"Grunkle Ford's experimenting with something. Wendy and I are gonna camp out on the floor outside the lab just in case he needs help fast."
Tripper was aware of them, and they could hear him scratching at Mabel's bedroom door. "I better let him out," Mabel said.
"I'll wait," Dipper told her.
Mabel stared at him with wide eyes. "This is really serious, isn't it?"
Dipper nodded. "Yeah. Afraid so. It's crazy—all this to be mayor of a dinky little place like our town. But Punt's . . . not a good guy."
They stood on the back porch while Tripper went out and did his business. As they waited, Mabel's phone rang—Teek's ringtone—startling both of them. "Hi," Mabel said. "Oh, good. Yeah, love you too. Be safe, OK? Hey, don't worry, I will be. I've got my grappling hook!" She laughed and then said, "You too." When she hung up, she told Dipper, "Teek got back home all right."
Tripper came in, Dipper closed and locked the door, and when they turned around, Tripper was in the kitchen, his paw pressed against the bottom cabinet door, where they kept a bag of doggie treats. "You con dog!" Mabel said. But she dug out a treat and then asked, "Hey, Dip? Mind if me and Tripper come down and stand guard with you and Wendy?"
"The more the merrier," Dipper said. "You'll need your sleeping bag. I'll get an extra air mattress. Oh, bring Trip's bed down, too."
They went down to the lab, Wendy, who was sitting on the floor reading, said, "Hi, Mabes. You OK? Teek said you had a scare."
"It was almost like that time I nearly hit the deer," Mabel said. "Near miss. But I'm OK, just jumpy."
It was a little like a very tense sleepover. The small anteroom to the secure lab had just about enough floor space for three sleeping bags and one doggie bed. "I'll bet Grunkle Ford will be awake all night," Dipper said.
"At least we'll keep him safe," Mabel said, yawning.
"Woof," added Tripper.
On the roof of the Shack, the owl's head swiveled toward town. Its pupils dilated. Almost as if it sensed prey, the raptor spread its wings and gave itself to the air, rising higher as it flew on silent wings toward town.
It headed for the highest point in the place, the old Northwest Mansion. Even from more than a mile away, as the owl flies, its sensitive eyes could see the pinpoints of headlights as a long car made the climb up the long, steep driveway.
There.
Yes, there.
Darkness calls to darkness, perhaps.
The dark owl flew as if drawn to a kindred spirit waiting in the night.
Yes.
There.
In the night.
