Car Haunt

(August 28, 2018)

17

The next day, a busy Tuesday, Soos gave Mabel, Wendy, and Dipper time off for recuperation. They needed it. Melody, Lorena, and Sheila pitched in, and Soos handled the stream of tourists that would swell to a flood by Labor Day without anyone drowning or raising a big stink about being cheated.

Not many tourist traps have as few disgruntled customers as the Mystery Shack. Maybe it's Soos's cheerful, goofy, outgoing nature as Mr. Mystery, or, dare we speculate, maybe over the years the Shack has developed its own magic.

Anyhow, that day the customers went away satisfied at the least, happy as the norm, and excited and exhilarated as the goals Soos aimed for and often hit. For some reason, the yellow WHAT IS THE MYSTERY SHACK? bumper stickers have proliferated over the last five or six years and are common in Oregon and not infrequent in far distant states.

True story: In Delbruck, Pennsylvania, a man driving a 2017 Zitti sports car sideswiped a young woman driving a 2008 Barclay compact. They called the police and, since they were right there already, pulled off at a rest area east of Bloomsburg to assess the damage, both of them angry and red-faced.

"You nether waste-disposal orifice!" she did not say, though she came close. "You cut me off!"

"Oh, you female canine! You're blaming me? Didn't you see the semi was forcing me into the right lane?"

They exchanged some more pet names, and then did a walkaround. He paused behind her car as he was about to photograph her Pennsylvania license plate. "Huh. You've been to the Mystery Shack?" he asked. "In Oregon?"

She glared at him. "Shut up, you son of an unwed mother. My wing mirror's gone, the paint's all scraped or smeared with red, my driver's door won't even open—"

"Hey, come here. Look," he said, gesturing at the lower right edge of his rear bumper at something hard to see because the bumper was curled away from the rest of the car now.

She looked and glimpsed the somewhat crumpled yellow rectangle. "You?" she asked. "Mystery Shack?"

"Gravity Falls, Oregon! Last year!" he said excitedly. "My parents live in Portland, that's the one in Oregon, and I went out to visit them—when did you go to the Mystery Shack?"

Now more subdued and even shy, she said, "I can't even remember how old I was! Six or seven. My parents bought a stack of these, and this is the last one left!"

"They still have them for sale there. My favorite part was—"

"Did you know it was on the Ghost Harassers Webflix show—"

"Did you guys take the tram tour?"

"It's a hoot, as Dad always said!"

You get the drift. By the time the state cops showed up to investigate—there was dashcam footage, and they decided the semi driver, who had not pulled over or even slowed down, was at fault, no charges for the guy and the girl—the guy handed over his ID with a smile. "I'm Mat Fillman," he said to the cop. "And this is my fiancée, Tilly Lee."

Long and short, Mat and Tilly later spent part of their honeymoon at the Shack. Magic, dudes.

Where were we?

At eight, Dipper phoned Billy Sheaffer. "It worked," Billy said. "I was kind of there, but I knew I was really in bed, but you know. I dreamed it all. I tried to sound intimidating. Did I say that word right? Anyway, could you hear me?"

"I heard you, and they heard you," Dipper said. "It worked like a charm. Thanks, Billy."

"Everybody's OK?"

"We're all good. Grunkle Stan got some scrapes and bruises, but not bad." After a pause, Dipper added, "The car's gone."

A disappointed, "Oh!" Another pause. "Thanks for not lying to make me feel better."

"Hey, man, you deserve it. Those little fragments followed your dream self right into the Pit, and we got 'em."

"Your car, though." Billy was thinking so hard that Dipper could almost hear his thoughts. Finally the boy said, "Don't worry. Something will work out."

Dipper gave a weary smile. "Is that a prediction?"

Then, very solemnly, Billy said, "It's a promise, Dipper."

Now everyone's dying to learn the rest of the story. I can't blame you.

Mat and Tilly decided to relocate (he lived in Jersey, she in Pennsylvania) and moved not to the town of Gravity Falls, but to a town not a hundred miles away, where they could go back to the Shack every summer—

Huh? You didn't want to hear about that? Don't look at me funny. I was getting to what happened in the Pit.

So—

As the long night wore on, with nobody sleepy, each one told the story in turn. Mabel went first, of course.

"The car was so big it took up most of the Pit! But I jumped right in. I could see it falling straight down, hood first, and the triangle-y things zipped past me and sort of plastered themselves to the roof of the car—"

"Yeah, that's why I glued the gold dust there," Stanley said. "My idea. I figured they might get stuck, like on flypaper, so I tried it. What can I say, I lucked out."

"So I had the pistol," Mabel said. "Or I grabbed it as I fell, anyhow. And all I could see of the Manitou were the taillights, but on the roof the triangles were glowing purple and slowly I got closer and closer and took careful aim at them with the quantum destabilizer—that's fun to say over and over, quantum destabilizer, quantum destabilizer, quantum destabilizer! All together with me, now—"

When they got her back on track, she said, "I used my theatrical training. I can't really shoot anything except my grappling hook, but I pretended I got cast as one of the Star Wars heroes, so I brought my blaster up and aimed it, and pew! Pew-pew! I zapped all the Bill pieces! Pew!"

Dipper took up the story: "I'd lost my pistol," he said. "But I know how skydivers speed up by holding their arms in and going straight down vertically, cutting air resistance. I did that and caught up with the Manitou about the time Mabel finished shooting. I could see Grunkle Stan was still at the steering wheel. The problem was that the car's so wide there wasn't much room on either side of it. I didn't know if I could even fit between the pit wall and the car without being crushed to death. And I knew we couldn't get the door open far enough for Stan to escape. So OK, the Pit spits living people out—but what if the living person's inside a car?"

Stan nodded. "Yeah, that bothered me, too. I was a bit concerned," he said. "But I decided I didn't have a choice, so ride it out. I said to myself, you'll either land in some goofball dimension or somehow get home or, most likely, stay on this ride for all eternity, probably never growing older or passing out, so enjoy the scenery. And then I says, there ain't any scenery. It's a pit! Anyways, I got my seatbelt unfastened, but Dipper's right. I couldn't open the door more than like six inches, and that was rough, because it scraped the side of the pit. There I was, trapped in the car, plummeting into the dark unknown!"

"Did you, like, die or some junk?" asked an anxious Soos, literally on the edge of his seat.

Stan just stared at him.

Mabel again: "Brobro showed me how to fall faster, so I did. I got hold of Dipper's ankle and pulled myself down. He yelled, 'Sis! We have to get him out of there! I'm so puzzled, I don't know what to do! You're the smart one, you figure it out!'"

"Not hardly," Dipper said. "Go on, Mabel. Tell them what I really said."

"OK, OK, but my version's better," Mabel said. "He asked if I still had the pistol, and I said yes, I'd dropped it but kicked it in as we were falling, so—anyway, I said yes, and he grabbed hold of the exhaust pipe or something and had me like climb over him and while he steadied me, I aimed real carefully, shooting at a sideways angle so I wouldn't hit Grunkle Stan—I had to shoot like, you know, slant-ways—and with one mighty Pew! I took out the back window! And then I yelled at Grunkle Stan!"

Stan took over: "I thought I was dreaming or hallucinating or somethin' when I heard Mabel yell, 'Come out the back window!' But I heard the wind whistling in, and finally I saw what was goin' on. She had that green stick-light thing, so I could see her. OK, so I reclined that seat flat, kicked off from the dash, and kinda climbed back to the back seat. I like stood on the backrests and reached up, and Dipper and Mabel got hold of my wrists. 'I'm too heavy for you!' I yelled. Then, the damnedest thing—'scuse me for the bad language—I heard somebody else shout somethin'. There was nobody there but Dipper and Mabel and me, but I swear I heard that screechy voice of Bill Cipher!"

"What did it say?" asked a wide-eyed Soos.

"It said, 'Hey, Stanley, in freefall you're weightless. You jump, they pull!'"

"'The astral projection!" Ford exclaimed. "Brilliant!"

Mabel said, "So Dip and me kicked off the trunk, still holding Grunkle Stan's hands, and he popped out of the back window like a cork from a champagne bottle. Did you know that stuff's alcoholic? Me and Candy had some at Grenda's wedding, and—"

"Mabes, cool it," Wendy said. "Tell us later. Dip, what then?"

"Then we all had to slow down," Dipper said. "I knew the car wouldn't come out of the Pit, but I didn't want its gravitational field to drag us with it into another dimension or whatever. So we—"

"Flattened out like flying squirrels!" Mabel said. "That was fun! But I wish there'd been a moose to pull something out of a hat."

Stan glanced at Ford, who shrugged. Then Stan said, "Yeah, and we had to've slowed, 'cause it looked like the car sped up. I dunno how long that part lasted—ten minutes at least—and the taillights got smaller an' smaller, and then they were just gone. And a few minutes later, we all came flippin' outa that stupid pit. Soos, make a note to repair that guard rail. Any sign of the car, Poindexter?"

Ford checked the temporary trail camera he had strapped to a tree a few yards away from the Bottomless Pit. A Manotaur was flexing his muscles and grinning at it.

"It's gone forever, I'm afraid," Ford said. "So sorry, kids."

"Meh," Wendy said, with her arm around Dipper—oh, let's be honest, it had been around him ever since she got to him after he emerged from the pit, and it didn't seem as if she were ever going to let go, and that was great with Dipper—"It was just a car. Me and Dip will figure something out. And we still got the old dependable Green Machine, push come to shove."

"I'm not sure I'd ever be comfortable driving the Manitou, anyway," Dipper said. "Have all the little triangles vanished?"

"Provisionally, I'd say yes," Ford said. "Since you returned, there's been no disturbance in the force—"

"Grunkle Obi!" Mabel yelled.

Ford looked surprised, but just nodded. "As I was saying, nothing's disturbed the unicorn-hair force field. I'm almost positive all those negative forces have been destroyed. We destabilized most of them on their flight around the house and toward the Bottomless Pit. The few that were left went into the pit—I noticed a strange golden glow that seemed to lure them on—"

"Billy's astral projection manifested as an illusion of Cipher," Dipper said. "I heard his voice and I think glimpsed the illusion, but I was really concentrating on the car. It was just there for a second, long enough for the little Bill fragments to make the leap, I guess."

"Once they landed on the dust and glue my brother sprinkled on the car roof and they absorbed at least a few particles of the gold (C) dust, they must have had a bit of reality to anchor them to the physical universe," Ford said. "So the Pit will carry them to whatever dimension is the final dumping ground for most things that fall in there. I'm virtually certain it's a one-way trip for them."

After so many hours of talking, it seemed pointless to wait for daylight, so they had breakfast and then went back to the same subject and talked themselves out, and finally Soos turned on the radio and they listened to tunes that were easy on the ears—it wasn't the kind of station on which you'd hear anything by Li'l Big Dog, not even "Let's Blanch Again," which never made the charts.

They came down from the adrenaline high, but nobody got to bed until the day had broken, and then, as you know, Fiddleford, Stan, Wendy, Mabel, and Dipper finally got to bed. Ford had trained himself to stay awake for long periods and satisfied himself with a quick catnap. The others woke up hours later, not at the same time, and Stanley and Ford put their heads together and made a couple of decisions.

The E—

Wait, what? You want to know more, you say? All right, just to tie some knots into a loose end or two.

A couple of days later, Mr. Motter called from the dealership. He didn't have a replacement Manitou, but he'd slept easier since it vanished, and when he learned its fate from Stan, he made a decision and used his connections.

"If you wouldn't mind accepting it," he told Dipper, "there's a used car on the lot, good condition, no crashes in the history, needs a little brake work. It's a 2015 Land Runner, the smaller model, in dark gray. If you'll take it as is, it's yours."

"We'd want to pay," Dipper said.

"Son, you can pay me one dollar. Getting rid of that haunted car is all the profit I want. Do we have a deal?"

Wendy, who had leaned close enough to Dipper to listen in, said, "We'll take it! Only can I use your repair bay and pit to do the brake work?"

"Uh—" said Motter.

Dipper noticed the car drove better than his wrecked Land Runner. It had slightly more head and leg room, about a cubic foot more cargo space, and after Wendy's touch-ups, it ate the miles.

And stopped when it should.

"You paid for this, didn't you, you old rascal?" Mabel asked Grunkle Stan.

"Nope," he said with a big grin. "Me and Ford just talked to Motter. We took him to see the Pit. To prove the car was gone, we dropped all of Dip and Wendy's paperwork in it. And when Motter saw it was really bottomless and knew the Manitou would never come back and he wouldn't have to go to court over sellin' a haunted automobile, he said, all by himself, 'I have a used car on the lot those kids might like.' And in exchange, Ford's gonna talk to the unicorns and see if he can round up enough hair to protect the Drudge Motors dealership."

"So it was a trade," Mabel said. "Eh, that's fair."

Their birthday came and went, and soon enough—too soon, it always seemed to Dipper—it was time to go back to the University and for Mabel to return to the Olmsted College of the Arts and for Teek to fly out east to his film school—

But as Dipper wrote in his journal,

I always hate to see Gravity Falls vanishing in the rear-view mirror. We're caravanning—Wendy in the Green Machine, Mabel in Black Beauty, and me in the—Mabel's idea—Billmobile. All three cars sport that yellow bumper sticker. Soos would have given them to us, Grunkle Stan charged a buck each.

And just a few minutes ago, Stan said something strange. He asked me, "Can you finish up your college work before New Year's Day 2020?"

Well, I'm supposed to graduate in May 2021, so that will be hard, but Wendy and I already talked it over. It won't be difficult for her to finish in December of 2019, because she had a head start with her community college courses. I promised Grunkle Stan I'd try to figure out a way to wind up at the same time. I do have some advanced placement credits, but I'd need a bunch more to satisfy degree requirements. Maybe I can overload and take a few evening courses. I promised Stan I'd try.

Anyway, Mabel's already starting her car, Wendy just came and gave me a kiss for the road, and now she's getting into her Dart, so here we go.

Goodbye for now, Gravity Falls. I'll miss you and your people, and I hope you'll miss us. It won't be for very long, though, so keep smiling through.

Like in the song that gives Grunkle Ford the willies, I'll say don't worry.

We'll meet again, some sunny day.

The End