One Day Reunited
Author Note:
I LIIIIIIIVE! This story is not dead! Sorry for keeping all of you waiting
In return for your patience, I give you the second-longest chapter so far. Only Chapter 2 is longer, and I probably should have split that one in half. Lots of character revelations, worldbuilding (can I still say that with fanfiction?), and a couple of new mysteries as well! It's been a long time in coming, so I hope this is worth the wait.
The date at the top of the last chapter was incorrect. It was supposed to be June 7, not July 6. I've corrected it now. Sorry for any confusion.
Thanks go out to Milky Boy Blue for many of the ideas in this chapter. I would not be half the fanfic writer I am without his expert advice and excellent suggestions.
By the way, the new characters in this chapter are not OCs. I made up the names because they don't have canon ones, but all of them are actually official Gravity Falls characters. Try to guess who!
UPDATE: This chapter has been revised to avoid the risk of turning Dipper into a Mary Sue. If you read the original version of the chapter, that would make sense. Let's just say the original fight scene at the end was a lot more... anime-like, which is not the direction I want to go.
Chapter 6: Heads On Straight
Location: Circle Park, Gravity Falls, Oregon
Date: June 8, 2012, Around 11:30 AM
"Alright, so our first suspect is… the gnomes," Mabel said. Dipper had handed her the suspect list and she was really getting into this investigation. They were currently sitting at a picnic table in Circle Park. "Where do we even find them?"
"I know a couple of places," Dipper answered, "They have a tavern in the enchanted part of the forest, so we could probably ask around there, see if anyone knows anything. It's about an hour's hike from the Shack."
"Won't they try to kidnap me again, or take revenge or something?" Mabel asked.
Dipper sighed. "I want to find out about that too. They only started doing the 'Norman' thing a couple of weeks before you got here, and I was planning on going to the tavern to investigate that anyway, so we can solve two problems at once. There won't be enough of them at the tavern to threaten us, though."
"Great, let's go!" Mabel said, jumping up from the bench.
"Why don't we investigate the other suspects here in town first?" Dipper suggested. "They're closer, and we'll have to stop by the Shack for supplies before going into the woods anyway."
"OK then," Mabel said. "Where to first?"
"I want to cross off some of the less likely suspects first, so let's try McGucket. You did tell him 'yes' when he asked if the wax figures were alive, and he might be crazy enough to try getting rid of them before their 'uprising.'" Dipper said, trying to sound sarcastic… even though he was secretly fearing the same thing.
"Sounds good to me!" Mabel said. They gathered up their stuff (axe and suspect list) into Dipper's backpack and set off down the street. Old Man McGucket lived in the junkyard on the edge of town, so it was a bit of a walk. "We should've taken the golf cart," Dipper groaned when they got there, and Mabel agreed. Her feet already hurt and this was just the first of (she looked at the list again) three suspects scattered throughout town.
The junkyard was pretty big, full of rusty old cars, broken appliances, and random trash. Scattered throughout the normal stuff were a few other things that looked more advanced, like the head of the Gobblewonker robot from last week. After walking around for a few minutes, they found McGucket. Mabel waved and called out to him. The hillbilly turned around, revealing that his right hand was currently inside the mouth of what looked like a small alligator. Unfortunately for their investigation, he didn't seem to remember the previous day (or the Gobblewonker incident, or even who they were) at all. This combined with the fact that McGucket never wore shoes (calling them "foot prisons") convinced them to cross the insane robotics genius off their list.
Next was Toby Determined: reporter, photographer, editor, and only writer for the Gravity Falls Gossiper, the town newspaper, as well as host of the local public radio channel. Apparently, Dipper had investigated him previously on suspicion of being some variety of goblin, but eventually concluded that the short, ugly, and rather creepy reporter was probably human.
Toby's reasoning for being on the suspect list was rather weak, but Dipper thought that perhaps Toby might have been disappointed that the wax museum unveiling wasn't a bigger story, and could have beheaded the statue in hopes of making a more sensational headline. Also, he was left-handed, just like that axe they found. Despite the weak reasoning, you never knew in a town like this.
The tiny newspaper office was full of papers stacked everywhere and hung on the walls, with the strange little reporter at a desk, typing away at an ancient-looking machine that was definitely not a computer. Dipper didn't outright accuse Toby of the "murder," but did present their evidence (the left-handed axe and a photo of the strange footprints) and asked if Toby knew anything about the break-in at the Mystery Shack the previous night.
"I had nothing to do with that murder," Toby said.
"Then where were you at 10:00 last night?" Dipper asked.
Toby pulled at his collar, looking nervous. He went over to the TV next to his desk and hit play on the clunky VCR, then rewound the tape. It was footage from a security camera in the newspaper office, and showed Toby opening the closet next to his desk and pulling out a cardboard cutout of Shandra Jimenez, which he proceeded to make out with, much to the twins' disgust.
"Well, the timestamp confirms it," Dipper said, "Toby, you're off the hook… you freak of nature."
"Hooray!" Toby cheered, having apparently not noticed the insult. Or maybe he just didn't care. "Could I get a statement on the incident for the Gossiper?"
Dipper declined and they walked out of the newspaper office. As if on cue, Mabel's stomach growled rather loudly, and Dipper looked down at his watch to see that it was nearly 1:00, well past lunchtime.
"Let's head back home," he said, "We can finish this after lunch."
Mabel was only too happy to agree.
Lunch was PB&J's. (Dipper was not sure where Mabel had found sprinkles, since he didn't think they had any in the house.) Afterwards, they decided to head into the forest to interrogate the gnomes. The two remaining suspects in town were the most likely to have committed the crime, and Dipper privately hoped it actually was the gnomes, because he really didn't want to confront the others. Gnomes, he knew how to deal with (at least as individuals). People, on the other hand… those were a mystery he wasn't sure he'd ever solve.
"All right, so if we're heading into the enchanted forest, we'll need to be prepared," Dipper told Mabel after lunch up in their room.
"Prepared for what?"
"It's an enchanted forest, Mabel. Even the Author barely scratched the surface of this place. There are all sorts of monsters or curses we could encounter in there. And that's on top of all the normal dangers, like bears or mountain lions or getting lost."
Mabel nodded, seeing his logic. "So what do we need?" she asked.
Grinning, Dipper replied, "I'm glad you asked."
Half an hour later, both of them were decked out like explorers. Dipper had the grappling hook clipped to his belt, pockets stuffed with survival and emergency gear, and carried both Journal 1 and his own Journal in his jacket. Mabel had less room for storage than her brother, but had filled the secret internal pockets of her sweater with as much as she could. Unfortunately, Dipper did not have an extra pair of hiking boots, so Mabel had to make do with her pink sneakers. She also wore one of those old-fashioned explorer helmets, which she'd found on the shelf of random stuff at the foot of her bed.
"It should be fine," Dipper assured her, "We'll take the golf cart this time."
"Doesn't it seem kind of… wrong to take a golf cart on a quest to an enchanted forest?" Mabel suggested.
"Nah. I've taken it there a bunch of times before. I suppose we don't have to, but it's an hour's hike otherwise."
Mabel's grimace was all the answer necessary. They'd been walking around all morning, and that was on sidewalks, not sparse forest trails.
Dipper flatly turned Mabel down when she asked to drive the golf cart, citing both his greater experience with it, and the fact that Mabel didn't know the woods. "You can hold the map, though." He turned to a page in Journal 1 and handed it to her, then started the engine.
As they drove, a thought struck Mabel. "Why didn't you pack a compass or one of those computer navigation thingies? The outdoorsy guys I know won't leave home without one."
"Normal navigation equipment doesn't work very well in Gravity Falls. I've got a compass"-taking a hand off the wheel, Dipper pulled one out of a pocket and handed it to Mabel-"but north is that way," he said, pointing to the left side of the path, while the compass pointed in nearly the opposite direction. "And no, my compass isn't broken. Outside the valley, it works fine."
"Haven't you ever tried to find out why?" Mabel asked.
"Of course! That's one of the first things I ever investigated," Dipper answered. "Wendy and Soos and I followed the compass all over the valley a few years ago, and we eventually found this big, round hill about half a day's hike from town where the needle just spun around endlessly. But there wasn't anything else there, so we just made a picnic out of the stuff in our backpacks and watched the sun set behind the cliffs before heading back to the Shack."
How romantic! They are totally perfect together. Mabel thought, But do they know that? Augh! How can I find out without tipping them off?
After roughly a half-hour's drive over bumpy forest trails (and sometimes, no trail at all), Dipper stopped the cart and set off a stink bomb underneath it. When Mabel made a skeptical (and disgusted) face, he explained that this would keep any creatures from stealing and/or eating the golf cart. "If you think it stinks now, imagine what it's like with a bear's sense of smell. Or a gnome's, for that matter."
They had arrived in what the Journal 1 map termed "The Enchanted Forest." Dipper pointed to a ring of standing stones as they passed by, saying it was the entrance to the unicorn glade, and Mabel's eyes bugged out.
"AAAAAAHHHH!" she screamed, "We have to go in! I am literally obsessed with unicorns! Have I mentioned that?"
"Yeah, only about a hundred times in the last two days," Dipper said, rolling his eyes. "But even if I wanted to, we can't get in there." He turned the page in Journal 1, showing a picture of a bearded guy in a robe headed by the words "Deepest Chant: Summoning the Unicorn." Next to the bearded guy were some words in a language that was definitely not English.
"In order to summon the unicorn, one must bellow this ancient chant, droned only by the deepest-voiced druids of old," Dipper read from the page.
"My voice… still isn't deep enough," he said, looking down at his feet. He sounded embarrassed and Mabel could see that his cheeks had gone slightly red. "Someone else helped me last time I was here."
Mabel frowned. If Dipper's voice wasn't deep enough to recite this druids' chant, hers definitely wouldn't work. If she wanted to meet real live unicorns, Mabel would need to find someone to help her. Grunkle Stan had a deep gravelly voice, but he didn't even believe in magic. How might Mabel persuade him?…
"But enough about unicorns," Dipper said, suddenly businesslike again. "It's time for some answers."
He led Mabel across the sparkly meadow to a twisted tree. In the hollow beneath the roots was a small door beneath a window and a sign proclaiming it to be "GNASTY'S." Another sign read "Squirrel parking in back."
"Someone here will know what Jeff's been up to lately," Dipper said.
"So this is where gnomes hang out. You're sure they won't try to make me their queen again?" Mabel asked with a slight note of apprehension in her voice.
"Not here. The tavern's neutral territory, so anyone who can find it is welcome, as long as they don't cause trouble," Dipper replied, opening the door.
Inside, several gnomes, a few ordinary-looking forest creatures, and what looked like fairies sat around tree-stump tables and on mushroom barstools. A beardless gnome bartender cleaned mugs behind a rough log bar, guarding a barrel labeled "NÖMBRAU," while a female gnome waitress walked around with a tray of drinks.
Dipper was obviously quite familiar with the place. When he leaned on the bar, the bartender looked up. "Long time no see, Pines. Who's the girl?" he growled.
"I'm Dipper's twin sister, Mabel!" she said. The bartender looked Mabel up and down, shrugged, and turned back to Dipper.
After explaining that he'd been grounded from the woods after getting lost last winter (which everyone in the tavern, including Dipper himself, laughed at), Dipper laid out the "murder" situation and asked if anyone knew what Jeff had been up to last night, such as if he'd been anywhere near the Mystery Shack. This sparked a flurry of whispers among the gnomes.
Dipper leaned close to Mabel and also whispered, "Gnomes are kind of secretive about how their society works, but from what I've figured out, their queen is actually a political ruler, not like a queen bee or ant or something. Apparently, the queen died about a month ago, and Jeff was her chief advisor or something, so he's sort of in charge, at least until they choose a new one."
Mabel nodded, still looking around the strange tavern. From what Dipper had said before, she'd assumed gnomes were dumb, but they certainly seemed a lot like people, with kingdoms and actual businesses and stuff. Why had he said they were dumb if he knew all of this was here? Maybe he'd been talking about the specific gnomes who had formed Norman?
Finally, a gnome spoke up, saying he'd heard that Jeff went to visit the fairies in hopes of a marriage alliance, and a couple of fairies nodded. "Plus, if Jeff had done anything like what you said, he'd already be in here bragging about it," added another gnome.
"Yeah, that sounds like Jeff alright…" Dipper said, rubbing his chin in thought. "Well, sorry I can't stay longer, guys, but we're still on the case!"
He swatted Mabel's arm, preventing her from removing an unsuspecting gnome's hat, then pulled off his backpack and removed a six-pack of Pitt, which he set on the bar. "Thanks for the info, everyone. Drinks are on me."
All the gnomes cheered as Dipper and Mabel exited the tavern and returned to the golf cart.
"I was so sure it was Jeff… he had the motive, the means, it all fit!" Dipper complained as he started up the cart.
Mabel pulled the suspect list out of Dipper's backpack. The last two names on the list were both on the same line, and they looked like normal person names. "Well, there's only one other suspect on the list," she said.
Even though Dipper already knew what the list said, he still groaned. "That's why I hoped it was the gnomes…"
"Why?" Mabel asked, "Who are 'Justin and Mitchell'? Are they ghosts? Monsters? Unicorns!?"
"No, they were, uh… in my class at school," Dipper answered, face going red again. "Ever since my first day of school here l, they've called me names and played pranks on both me and the Mystery Shack. Wendy and I have gotten them back a few times, but if this is a prank war, they're definitely winning."
That's… definitely not what I was expecting.
About 10:00 PM
The police car came to a stop in front of an ordinary-looking house.
"You kids better be right about this," said Sheriff Blubs, standing to one side of the door, "Or you'll never hear the end of it."
"The evidence is irrefutable," Dipper said, eyes narrowed and fists raised.
"It's so irrefutable," Mabel agreed.
"I'm gonna get to use mah nightstick!" Durland whispered excitedly.
After he and Sheriff Bulbs jabbed at each other with their nightsticks a few times, the skinny deputy tried to kick the door in… only for his foot to bounce off, causing him to fall over without damaging the door at all. Blubs immediately rushed forward to help his partner, but tripped over Durland's fallen flashlight and fell on top of him instead.
Dipper rolled his eyes and rang the doorbell, then stepped back. After getting back up and helping Durland to his feet as well, a sweating Sheriff Blubs stood in front of the door just before it opened. Though the eyes of the man who had answered the door widened in surprise upon seeing the sheriff there, his expression quickly changed to resignation, and he called back into the house, "JUSTIN! It's for you!"
Two kids joined the man. One of them resembled him, with dark brown hair and wearing a camouflage tank top, black shorts, and a blue-and-white baseball cap. Mabel vaguely recognized him from the unveiling yesterday. The other kid was slightly taller, with dark skin and brown hair, and wore a dark yellow shirt over blue jeans.
"Any idea why the police are here, Justin?" the man asked the shorter kid, giving the impression that this had happened before. "What did you and Mitchell do this time?"
"Nothing!" Justin said indignantly, and the other kid (Mitchell, apparently) nodded. Then he looked around the portly sheriff and saw Dipper standing there.
"Hey, what're you doing here, Dipstick?" Justin asked, before noticing Mabel as well. "And who's this girl who looks just like you? Did that redhead finally give up on you or-"
He didn't get to finish because Mabel lunged forward and grabbed the front of his shirt. "Where were you at 10:00 last night?" she nearly yelled into his face.
Normally, Justin would have pushed Mabel away, but he (and the others) were too shocked to say anything.
Mabel shook Justin again. "Come on, talk!"
"I-I was… here?" he stammered.
"So you weren't sneaking into the Mystery Shack to destroy my artistic masterpiece?" Mabel demanded, sounding a bit like the Constable from Ducktective.
Behind her, Dipper half-whispered, "Woah. Remind me never to get on your bad side."
"What the heck are you talking about?" Mitchell demanded, pulling Mabel and Justin apart. "And who even are you? Like, Dipstick's evil twin or something?"
"Well, I wouldn't say evil… but otherwise, yes!" Mabel giggled. "My name's Mabel, and I'm Dipper's long-lost twin sister from California!" she said, bowing theatrically.
"No, seriously," Justin deadpanned, "Who are you?"
Dipper sighed and stepped forward to stand next to Mabel. "I didn't believe it the first time either, but she's telling the truth, guys. Stan spilled the whole story."
He proceeded to give them the abbreviated version. Everyone from the school already knew that Dipper was adopted by Stan, so he explained that Mabel had grown up with their real parents, found out about his existence this summer and came up to Gravity Falls to meet him. He acknowledged that yes, it sounded like an overdone movie plot.
Justin and Mitchell looked at each other and shrugged. "Guess it's just another reason why Dipstick is the weirdest kid in town," Mitchell mumbled.
"Now, back to business!" Mabel growled, "Did you or did you not behead my wax sculpture last night? We know you had both the motive and the means, so don't try lying to me. You have the right to remain impressed with our awesome detective work."
She held up her hand toward Dipper for a high five, but the three boys and Justin's dad just stared at her. (Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland had already gone back to their car, where Blubs was asking his partner if he needed anything.) Finally, Justin said, "I saw the statue at the pizza party yesterday and thought maybe it would be funny to like, draw a mustache on it or something, but I wouldn't destroy it. We're pranksters, not criminals."
"Yeah. Your brother is a huge dork, but we don't hate the guy," Mitchell agreed, talking as if Dipper wasn't even there. "He (and most people) just need to lighten up and stop taking everything so seriously. That's why we play jokes on him… and everyone, really. We wouldn't want to see Dipstick dead, even if it was only a statue."
"Besides," Justin added, "last time we snuck into the Mystery Shack at night, Mr. Pines chased us off with a baseball bat. I don't wanna get clobbered by a crazy old dude!"
Though Mabel had only known Grunkle Stan for about a week, she could definitely see why local kids might be a bit scared of him, especially if they'd been snooping around his house. Stan seemed really paranoid, and Mabel thought he was probably hiding something, but when she had asked Dipper about it the other day, he'd just told her "If Grunkle Stan was hiding any big secrets in the Shack, I'd have found them a long time ago." Mabel supposed this was probably true, but then again, Dipper hadn't known about the room with all the wax figures in it, and he'd already told her there was probably another room on the second floor that he'd never managed to find a way into. As far as Mabel was concerned, the Mystery Shack definitely lived up to its name.
Dipper, who had looked at first slightly hurt and then rather confused during this exchange, finally closed his mouth and said awkwardly, "Well… sorry for bothering you then, I guess?"
"No problem!" Justin said, waving goodbye. "We'll get you back for it before the summer's over!"
As they walked back through the moonlit streets (passing the patrol car, where Blubs was wrapping Durland's foot in a bandage), Mabel thought about what Justin and Mitchell had said. She understood what they meant about pranks, even if they weren't her usual style of humor. Good pranks were hilarious, but didn't hurt anyone or actually break stuff, like how Dipper had pranked Grunkle Stan yesterday by ordering the pizza. Mabel's friend Aaron from back home was a lot like those guys, and she'd been involved in several of his practical jokes, both as an accomplice, a victim, and once even both at the same time. Aaron's pranks might have been pretty elaborate at times, but he'd always drawn the line at actual property damage or injury.
Mitchell was also right about Dipper needing to lighten up. A lot of the time, he acted more like a thirty-year-old science professor than any twelve-year-old Mabel had ever known. Even the nerdiest nerds back home mostly still acted like kids! In the last few days though, Mabel had definitely seen that shell of "maturity" crack a few times, and thought that, deep down, maybe her imaginary daydream brother and her real brother might not be as different as she'd initially thought. She made a promise to herself. By the end of the summer, I'm gonna pull Dipper out of his shell, or my name's not Mabel Pines!
June 9, just after midnight
Mabel wanted to hold a funeral service for Wax Dippy Fresh, to which Grunkle Stan objected, saying it would be a waste of time and money. That is, until Mabel had insisted, "My brother deserves a funeral, even if it's just a fake one for a fake brother. What would you do if it was your twin?"
Stan was silent for a while, so Dipper assumed he was thinking about Grandpa Sherman, his older brother who'd died when Dipper was six. In order to attend the funeral, Stan had closed the Mystery Shack and left Dipper with Soos and his grandma for three days. I wonder if Mabel was there… That's probably why he didn't take me with him… plus I never met Grandpa Sherman in the first place. Were they twins, though? He mentioned that…
"Fine. We can do the funeral thing," Stan said, completely changing his tune. "Go find Soos and we can set up whatever you want in the parlor."
So, for the second time in as many days, Dipper found himself setting up chairs. Soos put up some curtains and Mabel hung a newly framed photo of herself and Wax Dippy Fresh (taken during yesterday's unveiling) on the wall between them. Stan made coffee and put together a plate of cheese and crackers… What were those called again? Horse-doves? Whatever they were, he set them on the same foldout table they'd used for tickets yesterday, along with some fake electric candles. Though a far cry from the only other funeral Dipper had attended (for Wendy's mother several years ago), it seemed pretty extravagant for a mere sculpture.
But no matter where Mabel's feelings were right now, attending a "funeral" for a warped wax replica of himself just sounded… unsettling, for a multitude of reasons. Dipper wanted to be as far away from those creepy statues as possible. He'd thought of one more idea about solving the mystery, so taking the axe, he excused himself upstairs once Mabel and Soos started bringing in the wax figures.
As Stan sat down next to Soos in the front row of chairs, with wax figures precariously balanced in the rows behind them, his feelings were… mixed. Though Stan had attended a number of funerals in his life: for Ma, Shermie, Angela Corduroy… those had all been real ceremonies, for real people. In any other circumstance, Stan would never have agreed to this, but Mabel's comment about a "fake funeral for a fake brother" struck a chord with him. This was because Stan was part of the (he hoped) very small set of people to have attended their own funeral, which was the first time he'd pretended to be Ford in front of anyone who had really known the two of them. It remained one of the saddest and most surreal experiences of his life, which was saying quite a lot. Sure, this ceremony was nothing like that one had been; after all, Dipper was very much alive, but it was yet another point of similarity between the two generations of Pines twins.
A slow funeral march filled the room, emanating from a CD player under the table. To the right, the headless Wax Dippy Fresh lay in a coffin (really just a large crate from the attic, filled with old blankets). Mabel stood up on a stool behind the podium, dressed for the occasion in a solid black sweater and headband.
"Grunkle Stan, Soos, lifeless wax figures," she said solemnly, "Thank you all for coming."
Soos blew his nose on a handkerchief. It didn't take much to get that guy emotional.
"Some might say it's wrong to mourn a wax statue," Mabel continued.
"They're wrong!" Soos exclaimed, jumping up from his seat.
"Easy, Soos," Mabel said, holding up her hands. She then looked at the headless statue in the coffin. "I used to think my brother Mason died when we were babies, so I tried to imagine what he might have been like. Sometimes… my imaginary brother was my only friend in the world. But now that I know my real brother, I guess it makes sense that my daydream of him would have to… to leave. Imaginary Bro-bro… I hope you're having fun in Imaginary Heaven." Mabel brushed a tear from her eye and stepped down and walked around to look into the "coffin" again.
My only friend in the world… that's what Stan and Ford had been to each other for seventeen years, but Mabel didn't even have that… and neither had Dipper. They're so similar to me and Ford, maybe it's a good thing they were separated, so they won't make our mistakes, Stan thought darkly, feeling his eyes get moist. He stood up to leave. "I, uh… got glitter in my eye," he said, and walked out the door. Yeesh, that's a lame excuse even for me.
-LINE BREAK-
For a minute after Stan left, Soos stared after him, as if he were thinking about following. Instead, he turned and stood next to Mabel. She was grateful for his presence.
After a minute or so standing there, Soos asked her, "Dude, did you ever catch the murderer?"
"No… it wasn't the gnomes, or that reporter, or even those prankster guys," Mabel answered dejectedly, "All we found out was that the axe is a fake, like a movie prop or something." She went back to staring at the coffin.
Another minute of silence, during which Soos glanced around the room, then asked "Hey, girl-dawg… didn't that axe come from one of these wax dudes?"
"Huh?" Mabel snapped out of her semi-daydream reminiscence.
"Yeah, I think it was that lady in the yellow dress," Soos said, squinting as he surveyed the wax figures. "Not totally sure, but what do I know?"
Mabel looked at the empty-handed statue in question, and vaguely recalled seeing it with an axe before. Walking over to inspect it further, Mabel tripped on a loose floorboard. As she got back up, she noticed something about the statue. Her shoe has a hole in it. Of course, all the wax figures had that; it's where the little pole thingy from their stand-dealy was attached. Mabel had even sculpted one into Dippy Fresh. "Hang on…" she said, standing up and rubbing her forehead. "I think I have an idea happening here… the axe came from the wax guys… and the wax guys all have holes in their shoes… That means the murderers are…"
"Standing right behind you?" said an unfamiliar, British-accented voice.
All three of them spun around and gasped. Wax Sherlock Holmes had moved from his spot in the back row and now blocked the door.
The quiet room was suddenly full of noise as, impossibly, all of the previously stiff wax figures (except for the headless Dippy Fresh) all groaned, stretched, and stood up.
"Congratulations, my young amateur sleuth. You've unburied the truth." Wax Holmes walked up the aisle, followed by the other wax figures until they all stood between the three non-wax people in the room and their only hope for escape. "And now, we're going to bury you," Holmes said, pointing his magnifying glass at Mabel.
"Bravo, Mabel Pines. You've discovered our little secret," he continued, reaching into his coat and pulling out Wax Dippy Fresh's head, then turned to the other wax figures. "Applaud, everyone," he told them, "Applaud sarcastically."
The other wax figures clapped, but Holmes said it sounded too sincere and made them clap slower. Mabel still didn't know whether to be afraid or confused. "How is this possible?" she asked, "You're made of wax! Oh wait, you guys must be magic!"
Holmes slammed his fist on the coffin right by Mabel's face. "We're CURSED!" he yelled. All the other wax figures repeated the word.
Turning away, the wax detective continued to explain. "Cursed to come to life whenever the moon is waxing… Your uncle bought us many years ago at a garage sale."
"A haunted garage sale, son!" Wax Coolio interrupted.
"And so, the Mystery Shack Wax Collection was born," Holmes continued, "By day, we would be the playthings of man."
"But when your uncle went to sleep, we would rule the night!" interjected Wax Coolio again.
"It was a charmed life for us cursed beings," said Holmes, "That is, until your uncle brought that boy here. He awoke one night, saw us come to life, and told Stan. The next day, your uncle closed up shop. We've been waiting ten years to get our revenge… but we got the wrong guy."
"So… you were trying to murder Dipper for real?" Soos realized with horror.
"He was right all along!" Mabel gasped, "Wax people are creepy!"
"Enough!" Holmes said, facing them again. "Now that you know our secret, you must die."
-LINE BREAK-
Up in the attic, Dipper took a small forensics kit from one of his desk drawers. I can't believe I didn't think of this earlier… After pulling on a pair of gloves, he shined the kit's ultraviolet light on the axe and dusted it with a small brush full of powder, revealing several sets of fingerprints. Let's see… Those are from Soos, and the big ones must be Dan's. Then there's my fingerprints, which means this last set that's sort of like mine is probably Mabel's.
But even after inspecting the axe from every angle, Dipper could find no fingerprints except from the people he'd personally seen touch it, and there's no way any of them were the culprits. He paced around the room, chewing the end of an (empty) pen as he considered the clues.
"Hang on…" he said, thinking out loud, "Dan said this axe was just a prop, like from a movie… or maybe a museum…"
Hoping he was just being paranoid, Dipper quickly turned on the computer to find the photos from yesterday. Mabel had used his camera to take several photos of her sculpture, and there were some from the unveiling party as well. Sure enough, in the background of a photo with all the wax figures set up on the porch, he saw it. One of the statues, a redheaded lady in a yellow dress, held the axe. It was definitely the same axe Dipper had just been inspecting. "No fingerprints… fake axe… oh, no," he whispered. "My nightmares were real!"
Dipper grabbed the axe and rushed downstairs to warn the others.
"Guys, I found the real murderers! It was the wax statues! They're-" Dipper burst into the parlor to see them already advancing on Mabel and Soos "-alive…"
Holmes turned to see Dipper standing in the doorway, axe in hand. "It's him!Attack!" he ordered, and four wax figures eagerly rushed to obey.
"Interview this, Larry King!" Dipper swung the axe, decapitating the ugly guy with the suspenders. The body ran blindly while the head screamed, "My neck! My beautiful neck!"
Unfortunately, the lady in the yellow dress got behind Dipper and yanked the axe away, leaving him empty-handed. He quickly spun around, hit the axe-wielding lady with a throat chop… and discovered that solid wax is tougher than it looks. Though Dipper's chop knocked her back, she didn't seem to feel any pain from it, and raised the axe to strike. Though dull, that heavy axe could definitely still break some bones, and Dipper just barely rolled out of the way before the axe came down, burying itself in the floorboards.
As Soos had received much of the same martial arts training as Dipper, he was also fighting the wax figures, but even then, fists and feet didn't make much of an impact on their unfeeling adversaries. Genghis Khan charged straight for him, but Soos dodged to the side, causing Khan to bowl over several of his fellow cursed sculptures.
Mabel used the opening to make a beeline for the refreshments table. But Wax Edgar Allen Poe had noticed Mabel's escape and moved to corner her. Desperately throwing whatever she could reach, nothing made an impact until Mabel blindly grabbed the pot of coffee. When it splashed on the wax poet's face, he screamed in surprise as his features melted into an unrecognizable blob.
"That's it!" Mabel cried. "We can melt them with hotty melty things!"
Without a weapon, Dipper wasn't doing all that well. Soos was a lot bigger and stronger, so his blows could at least knock the heavy wax figures around, even if they weren't doing much actual damage. Not so for Dipper himself; though just as skilled as Soos, if not more, he simply lacked the muscle to hit that hard, and against foes who felt no pain, accuracy didn't matter much.
All Dipper could do was dodge and weave, which quickly resulted in his being cornered. Then Mabel shouted out her discovery of the wax figures' weakness to heat, but what good was that to him now, without any sort of heat source to use?
Meanwhile, Mabel had grabbed the electric candles from the refreshments table and wielded them like lightsabers, disarming Wax Shakespeare (literally) and cutting Wax Groucho Marx in half. But there were still too many opponents, and as Dipper watched, Wax Lizzie Borden (that's who the axe lady was!) chopped the candles out of Mabel's grasp, and one of Shakespeare's disembodied arms threw the other, which fastened around her neck. "Ahh! Ugh… Get off!" Mabel choked. Wax Lizzie raised her axe.
"NO! MABEL!" Dipper screamed. For some reason, Mabel's safety was suddenly his only thought, but he was too far away to be of help. Feeling a sudden surge of adrenaline, he shoved aside the two wax figures who were nearly upon him while at the same time drawing and cocking his grappling hook. Right as Wax Lizzie swung, Dipper fired, the heavy grapnel wrapping around the axe and yanking it out of her hands. At almost the same time, Dipper ripped Wax Shakespeare's arm away from Mabel's neck and spun around to punch Wax Lizzie harder than he'd ever hit anything before. Mabel, Dipper, and Wax Lizzie all stared, both at Dipper's wax-covered fist… and at the baseball-sized hole in Lizzie's chest.
Of course… Dipper thought, mentally facepalming. I've been holding back without even thinking… but these guys aren't human… they're not even properly alive… and they're trying to kill us. There's no reason to pull any punches. Most of the other wax figures had ganged up on Soos, so Dipper ran to help his overwhelmed friend, yelling a battle cry that might have been intimidating had his voice not suddenly jumped up several octaves.
"All right," Holmes said, sticking Dippy Fresh's head onto a mounted rhino's horn, "Let's get this taken care of." He grabbed a sword from a nearby display on the wall and brandished it at Mabel. (That sword wasn't a prop… though why it was here, Dipper had no idea. They didn't use this room often.)
Across the room, Genghis Khan charged at Soos again, roaring like a bear. The handyman snapped out of it just in time to dive out of the way, and Khan ran straight into the roaring fire, splattering wax all over Soos.
"Heh-heh, he's dead now," Soos said, then realized he was still holding a red-hot poker (having luckily avoided landing on it when he dodged). Once Dipper saw that Soos's poker was so much more effective, he stopped trying to punch holes through wax figures or chop off their limbs, and focused on keeping them from overwhelming Soos so the handyman could deal with them one at a time. In a moment of calm after knocking Wax Robin Hood back, Dipper happened to glance away and noticed something was missing. Where did Mabel and Sherlock Holmes go?
Mabel and Holmes had dueled their way out of the room and up the stairs, and Mabel was beginning to appreciate that an axe was not a very good weapon when defending against a sword. She had to make sure to block with the blade and not the handle, or her only weapon would be chopped in half. Thinking high ground could only be an advantage, Mabel backed toward the stairs and Holmes followed her. Most likely, having the high ground on the stairs was the only reason she hadn't yet been skewered, but Holmes was still able to force her back, and since now they'd reached the attic, that advantage was gone.
But as she frantically blocked another blow, Mabel happened to notice that the sky outside had turned red… or was that just the stained-glass window? No, it was definitely the sky. The sun was rising! And what had started this whole wax statue mess yesterday? As she was backed into the corner, Mabel had an awesome idea!
"Once your family is out of the way, we'll rule the night once again!" Holmes said triumphantly, raising his sword.
"Don't count on it!" said Mabel, and jumped forward, rolling between Holmes' legs as he struck and heading for the window while the sword got stuck in the floorboards. Mabel opened the window and climbed out onto the roof, scaling the steep slope up to the top of the shack.
"Come back here, you brat!" yelled Holmes. He reached out the window and tried to swing at her, but the angle was wrong. Mabel climbed out onto the "SHACK" sign with the wax detective right behind her. Their weapons crossed thrice more until Holmes tried a two-handed slash, hoping to overpower Mabel, but she dodged backward and his strike instead chopped off the newly-repaired "S," sending it crashing to the ground once again.
"Do you really think you can defeat me, girl? I'm Sherlock bleeding Holmes! Have you seen my magnifying glass? It's enormous!" he bragged, holding up the object in question.
But Mabel threw the axe directly at him, and though Holmes barely managed to block the projectile, by then Mabel had climbed up over the "Mystery" sign to the other side of the house. Sliding down the roof, she grabbed onto a window that projected out from the house and hid behind the chimney to catch her breath. Okay, looks like the coast is clear, she thought… only to be kicked in the ribs, sending her flying almost to the edge of the roof.
"Any last words?" Holmes asked smugly, raising his sword for a finishing blow.
But though the pain of Holmes' kick hurt like… well, a kick in the ribs, what Mabel saw behind him brought a smile to her face. "Yeah…" she said, "Good morning!"
"Good… morning?" Holmes said, dumbfounded… until something dripped onto his face. "What?!" He looked up to see that his hands were melting, losing their shape. The sword clattered to the rooftop as Holmes gasped in horror and turned to see the sun crest over the distant mountains. "No!"
Light crept down the slope of the Mystery Shack roof, and over Holmes, causing more of his features to blur and drip.
"You know, letting me lead you outside? Probably not your sharpest decision," Mabel pointed out. "Ducktective never would have fallen for a trick like that."
"Outsmarted by a beskirted child? NOOOO!" the rapidly melting cursed statue screamed. "Fiddlesticks! Humbugs! It's a total kerfuffle! What a hullabaloo…"
By now, Holmes was little more than a vague face sticking out a puddle, which started to flow down the sloped roof.
"Case closed!" Mabel said, dusting off her hands, which caused her to emit a violent glitter-filled sneeze, nothing like Dipper's adorable kitten-like ones.
"Ha-ha-hgrgl…" What was left of Holmes made a gurgling sound that might have been a chuckle. "Sneezing glitter? Those policemen were right, you're absolutely ridiculous…"
"RIDICULOOOUUSSS!" screamed the head as it fell from the roof and splattered on the ground.
"Ew…" Mabel said, wrinkling her nose. But Holmes' last words hurt more than he might have thought. Dipper and Stan may not have picked up on it, but when Sheriff Blubs had called her a ridiculous city girl last night (technically two nights ago now), it had dug into old wounds. And then Mitchell had unknowingly twisted the knife when he called Dipper the "weirdest kid in town." It was exactly what Mabel heard about herself from kids back home: weird, immature, stupid, silly, babyish… freak.
But Mabel quickly buried those feelings, as she always did, squashing them deep down below her awesome victory, and climbed carefully back over the sign and back through the attic window.
Once all the wax figures were unable to fight on account of being chopped into various pieces by Mabel's candles and Soos's poker, Dipper and Soos gathered up all the parts and burned them in the fireplace. Throwing in the heads was a bit unnerving, but for Dipper, it felt cathartic to finally destroy one of his oldest childhood fears.
The last one was Wax Shakespeare's head. "Though our group be cleft in twain, man of wax shall rise again!" it sang.
Eugh… thought Dipper with a shudder as he collapsed into a chair near the window. I sure hope not. Might have to ask Stan where he got these and see if there's any more we need to destroy, or what enchanted them in the first place…
"Know any limericks, dude?" Soos asked, picking up the Bard's disembodied head.
"Uh…" it replied, "There once was a dude from Kentucky-"
"Nope! Boring," Soos said, tossing the head into the fire with the other parts. Just then, Mabel walked into the room.
"You okay, hambone?" he asked, and when she nodded, he followed up with "What happened to that British dude?"
"I showed him the pretty sunrise," Mabel answered. "It just melted his heart… and face." She set a chair next to the mounted rhino head and climbed up onto it to lift her own sculpture's head off the pointed horn.
"Seems like my 'powers of observation' aren't as good as I thought…" said Dipper dejectedly, "From the look of it, you solved this mystery way before I did."
"I couldn't have done it without my sidekick!" Mabel said, jumping down from the chair.
Dipper chuckled weakly, "No offense, Mabel… but you're definitely still the sidekick."
"A-doy! I didn't mean you. I meant this guy!" She held out Wax Dippy Fresh's head.
Further discussion was halted by Stan walking back in. "HOT BELGIAN WAFFLES! What happened to my parlor!?" he shouted upon seeing the state of things: wax was splattered all over the room, chairs lay everywhere (many broken), curtains torn, the table overturned, even the window was shattered. As he watched, the curtain rod over the window fell to the ground.
"Your wax figures turned out to be evil, so we fought them to the death!" Mabel explained cheerfully.
"I decapitated Larry King," Dipper said.
"Yeah, Mr. Pines, we totally had to like, throw down with those dudes," Soos added.
"Ha-ha! You kids and your imaginations!" Stan laughed, throwing up his hands.
"On the bright side though, look what we found!" Mabel held up Wax Dippy Fresh's head.
"That's great, pumpkin," Stan said. "Now line up for some affectionate noogie-ing!"
While Stan ground his fist into the twins' hair (Mabel protested, and though Dipper didn't like it either, he had long ago resigned to his adoptive father's sense of humor), a police siren sounded as Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland pulled up outside.
"Solved the case yet, boy?" the rotund sheriff asked mockingly, "I'm so confident you're gonna say 'no,' I'm gonna take a long, slow sip from my cuppa coffee."
Mabel held up Dippy Fresh's head again. "Actually, the answer is yes!"
As if it had been written as a gag on a children's TV show, Blubs choked on his coffee and spat it in his partner's face, causing Durland to scream and do the same. This repeated a few more times until Blubs grabbed the wheel and drove away while the Pines laughed (Stan in particular). It became both more and less amusing when the patrol car crashed into a tree (fortunately not yet moving very fast). Soos, ever the helpful handyman, went to get his toolbox.
"So… what are you gonna do with that?" Dipper asked Mabel, indicating the wax head still in her arms.
"Put it back where it belongs, of course!" She shoved the head into Dipper's arms (ignoring his look of disgust), ran over to the "coffin," and lifted out her still-headless sculpture, leaning it against the now-empty crate. Then she scraped away some still-soft wax from the fireplace stones and applied it to the figure's neck inside the sculpted blue vest, and looked at Dipper expectantly.
Feeling slightly sick at carrying a replica of his own head, Dipper handed it back to Mabel, who stuck more soft wax onto the head's side of the neck before plopping it back on the shoulders where it had been sculpted. "Now we just wait for the wax to harden, and he'll be as good as new!"
"Hang on… its head is on backwards." Dipper grabbed the head and twisted it around 180° (feeling slightly morbid as he did so). "And didn't this thing used to have a hat or something?"
"You mean this hat?" Stan asked, pulling a blue-and-white trucker cap out of his coat. "I found it on the floor last night before the, uh… incident. Thought it might've been misplaced from the gift shop, so I was gonna put it back, but then the whole 'murder' thing happened and I forgot." He tossed the cap to Mabel, who put it on her statue's head, facing forward this time.
When Dipper saw the wax replica of himself wearing that hat, with the blue pine tree on the front, he got a very strange feeling, almost like déja vu, but those caps had been in the gift shop for years and he'd never given them a second thought. For some reason, something about that symbol resonated with Dipper, but he couldn't put his finger on why.
His musings were interrupted by Stan telling the twins to get some sleep, as they'd been up all night with the investigation and the funeral and "fighting wax figures to the death, apparently."
None of them noticed a strange clanging in the vents, produced by the wax head of Larry King, only survivor among the cursed wax figures, chasing the rat who'd responded to the offer of an interview by stealing his ear.
Despite the sunlight streaming in through the triangular window, Mabel fell asleep practically the second her head hit the pillow, and exhausted as he was from the day's events, Dipper would have followed suit, but he just couldn't stop thinking about the pine tree symbol from that hat. Well, if I can't sleep anyway, might as well write down what just happened…
Dipper grabbed his Journal and a pen from the desk. Upon seeing the dark blue cover of his most treasured possession, something clicked in his mind. After nearly two years, he knew what else belonged there.
Very quietly, so as not to disturb Mabel (though she seemed pretty deeply asleep), Dipper opened his bottommost desk drawer and pulled out a piece of silvered paper; the same one that had come with his Journal. Like a mirror, it glowed in the sunlight.
After tracing it onto the paper with a ruler, Dipper cut out the pine tree shape with his pocket knife, and very carefully glued it to the front of his Journal, right below the silver-painted constellation that shared his name. Something was still missing… of course!
Mabel had brought the paints and brushes that she'd used while making Dippy Fresh upstairs and set them on her side of Dipper's desk. Taking the bottle of black paint and a small brush (unknown to him, the very same brush that the Author had used for this task three decades ago), Dipper painted a large number "1" in the center of the silver Pine Tree.
Seeing his newly adorned Journal sitting next to the Author's first Journal, identical save for their color and their symbol… it just looked right. For whatever reason, this Pine Tree symbol was what had always belonged there. This is why he'd felt so strongly not to put an outline of his own hand onto the Journal the night he'd received it.
Suddenly extremely tired again, Dipper crawled back into bed and was asleep within seconds, dreaming (as he often did) of meeting his hero, the original Author.
Zlwkrxw Pdvrq wkhuh wr gudz wkh iluh, wklv Pdeho'v idfhg pxfk juhdwhu luh.
Author Note:
Justin and Mitchell are named after (but not really based on) two guys I knew when I was Dipper's age. The real Justin made my life miserable every chance he got, and it only got worse once he found out about my personal anomaly: Asperger's Syndrome. It may be a lot less physically obvious than polydactyly or an impossible birthmark, but this condition is probably even more socially debilitating. It does help my writing, though, since I'm able to use my personal experiences to connect with the characters of Dipper and Ford on a very personal level.
It's pretty ironic that Justin bullied me for being an Aspie since it turned out that he was one too…
A lot has happened since I last published anything here. I finished a semester of online college, during which I decided that I want to pursue a career in molecular biology. That means no more math classes (probably…)! It also means I'm only one semester away from an Associate's Degree. Yay, knowledge!
The semester I'm currently in seems like it will be less intense, which means I'll probably have more time for writing, so that'll be good.
Speaking of which, though I haven't added any new chapters to Closer Than Ever Before, the existing chapters have been heavily revised. I've added a few entirely new scenes to Chapters 2 and 3, and changed up many of the existing ones accordingly. You might want to go back and read that story over again; it's changed pretty considerably.
I've also begun co-writing a new story with ChaseIsKing (it'll be under his name), called A Different Kind of Home. We've worked really hard on this story, which is the first book(?) in an epic Gravity Falls sequel trilogy. The first chapter should be up in the next few days, so be sure to check that out, too.
As always, reviews are inspiration and all theories, ideas, and constructive criticism are welcome.
Celebrate your weirdness, get the vaccine, wear a mask, BYE!