The descent to The Crawlspace, no longer reliant on jumping down a mucus filled, fanged throat, was almost routine nowadays for The Pines. For Pacifica, it was more of a horrific inconvenience. She found Pascoe creepy as all hell, she had bad memories down here that almost rivalled the Manor, and she still hadn't managed to get her earrings back from whatever was left of Curzon.
Rude.
This time, it wasn't even to encounter a group of neurotic tiny mobsters, or to fight a giant liquorice demon. It was just to ask a weird British gremlin… thing with a toffee fetish some questions. It just felt like a pain.
All the same, the anger and concerns did kind of melt away when they entered the space's main chamber.
She had almost forgotten how they had left it.
Beautiful, glinting metal from the floor illuminated everything in that warm, golden light. It was almost easy to forget how they left it - how things had changed. The Crawlspace was back to its old levels of activity, bustling with all manner of cryptids and creatures as it had been. Tumbledown buildings, creaking archways and European style market halls were now elegant brick tenements and brownstones, towering structures that took advantage of the place's vertical space for an altogether more impressive, efficient - albeit markedly less cliché and whimsical - setting. Arched stone walkways had become iron catwalks under the Clurichaun's rebuild, nonsensical manholes pushing out ethereal jets of steam from the town's natural springs and geothermal fissures.
And, across the lot, an enormous, glittering rink of gold. A flourishing, beautiful, mirrored rink of precious metal, rippled and glowing in reflective light.
It was a strangely beautiful fate for the ill-willed marketplace. No longer carrying a scrap of the eternally imprisoned Cankerblight. Gnomes, faes, witches and manotaurs went about their jolly manner with sinister glee, market criers calling out and shedding their wares like clumps of hair from a balding hound.
"Conspiracy theories! Get your finest conspiracy theories!"
"Creepy ceramic doll heads! Evil superpowers guaranteed! Laser eyes a speciality!"
"Animate coal! Animate coal! Coal with the ability of speech!"
"Human remains! Fresh human remains! Get 'em while they're warm an' foisty!"
Feet, flaps, tentacles and trotters echoed across the busy plaza, surrounded by market stalls and barrels of concoctions, potions, remedies and elixirs. It was all dark, all evil, all essential Gravity Falls, and it was once again happening directly under the town's feet. The status quo of weirdness had - essentially - returned.
Dipper wrapped his fingers around Pacifica's hand. It felt strangely nice to see the crooked marketplace back. Like seeing dolphins in Venice or some junk. The nature of Gravity Falls seemed to be somewhat healing despite their presence. Maybe even coming back better than it was.
That was kinda pleasant.
Pacifica leant closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder with a small smile. She never thought she'd say it, but it felt awesome to see the place recovering.
Stan sniffed his fingers and creased his brow as he strode along the plaza to the wall. A group of Clurichauns in hard hats were busy plastering up the old access hole. They blinked defensively as they saw the old man stroll towards it with purpose.
"Hey, hey, c'mon hume, don't, we - we just fixed this thing!"
"Move outta the way, Gracey."
"Gracey's my mother's name! You insultin' my mother?! I'll make ya wish y'd never bin born! I ain't no-"
"You wanna piecea this?" Stan snarled, raising his fist.
The two belligerent creatures scattered, stepladder and trowel in hand, as Stan continued on his mission and rapped his knuckles on the hollow surface of The Crawlspace's interior wall.
Pacifica huffed as the knocking was returned, followed by the sound of scratching and scraping from deep inside outer skin of the space's interior. Slowly, cracks began to appear in the still moist plaster, until, without hesitation, Pascoe destroyed it with its shovellike nails and crawled out.
Its clammy, pale grey skin caught the yellow tones of the reflective floor, and went a strange beige colour. The frail form of the scrawny little goblin was every bit as otherworldly, grotesque and slick with moisture as it was the day they had first met the creature.
Though, this time, it was bedecked in a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses.
"Gorthugher Da. Howsit going?"
"Uh, yeah, gortooger darh. We need to ask you a few questions, pal."
"Nice one mate, you brought my fee?"
"Sure, sure." Stan huffed and handed the Knocker a bag of toffees. It eagerly opened up the bag and began untwisting the paper as Ford and Dipper prepared their notebooks. "We've got a bit of a-"
"Bit of a palaver?" Pascoe interrupted, popping one into its mouth. "Go on."
"Beavers."
"Beavers?"
"Beavers."
"Beavers…?"
"Revenant beavers."
"Revenan-"
Pacifica interrupted the rather dumb exchange before the word beaver had to be said another time. "Scuttlebutt Island beavers. With a ship."
"They're back? 'Sit been fifty years again already? Man, time flies when yer havin' fun. Not that I'm havin' fun. Not much fun living in a wall."
"Figured you'd know 'em." Stan grinned.
"Used to play poker with one of 'em on Tuesdays."
"Right." Ford said, trying to steer the conversation. Pascoe was the sort of creature who could ramble on for hours if given the chance. "So you know about them, you know their time intervals, what else do you know?"
"Right, these beaver revenants, they're spirits of sailors, right? Possessed. The story goes that when Northwest manor was being built, they ran out of trees. Chopped 'em all, and they only needed a few bits to finish the job. Nathaniel was absolutely cock-sure that these trees were the only ones that were worthy of his 'ome."
"So they stole it from the ship. We know that much."
"But the thing was, they stole the boards from the hull, didn't tell anyone, then it sank, right? And it wasn't the only one. That lake used to have a paddle steamer - that sank too. Guess what its rudder was made of. Rowboats? Replaced 'em with paper cutouts. The first claims the lake had a monster came from all that palaver. They figured that by sinking more boats, people'd just look elsewhere, right? Muddies the tracks. That summer, the lake gets abandoned, Scuttlebutt lumber camp is abandoned, the Northwests get their house."
Pacifica was hardly overjoyed to hear yet more tales of her family's misdeeds. Especially ones that claimed lives. Quietly, the Northwest heir backed away - retired somewhat from the small crowd and pieced her ideas together. Tried to consider her thoughts. Tried to work out what it all meant.
She continued listening, but not without a sense of bitterness. Anger. Fear.
The Northwests and their history continued to be not only the bane of the town's history - but a blight on Pacifica's life. A continuous chip of marble upon her shoulder, razor-sharp and weighted. Was this another thing her father had kept? Had he known? Was their mansion genuinely built from stolen materials that had led sailors to their doom?
She glared at Pascoe, the thin, wiry creature of indeterminate gender, indeterminate origin and indeterminate species. The Knocker still freaked her out. Its scrawny body, thin wispy brows, clammy, silvered skin… how trustworthy could it be, really?
As he unfurled his story, it was difficult to doubt him. But she desperately wanted to. Desperately, desperately wanted to.