Note: I am trying to make sure this chapter is readable without having played the game, but if you are wondering, the Mystery Skulls are investigating the house from the game What Remains of Edith Finch. Events here are not canon to the game, it's just a personal theory about the family curse. That being said, there are probably spoilers for the game in this and the next chapter, ye be warned.
"And that wraps up Vivi's Top Ten Reasons Why We Should Visit Gravity Falls Next." Vivi kept her hands on the steering wheel, but she managed to glance at Arthur out of the corner of her eye and flash her most winning smile. "Well?"
"Vivi, literally every single reason on that list is a good reason not to visit."
"Were you even listening?"
"Yeah, I was, and it sounds like supernatural weirdness permeates the whole town. Our group is still at the 'deals with localized hauntings' level. Like, one house at a time. No way do we have the experience necessary to investigate a whole town. It doesn't even sound like there's any one weird thing about it, it's like… fifty different weirdnesses."
"Fifty different 'localized' weirdnesses? Eh? Eh?" She tapped a finger on the steering wheel, hopefully. "We could take 'em one at a time!"
"More like fifty different weirdnesses that are probably in cahoots with each other. No way. Besides, a trip that far out would put serious strain on the bank account."
Sighing, she lifted her right hand off the steering wheel and extended it to Arthur. "Fine. Gimme compensatory snackage for emotional distress over missing out on all the coolness that is most certainly happening over there."
A chipotle flavored pickle landed in her hand. She sniffed it and wrinkled her nose. "Why does your mouth hate you?"
"You don't get to knock it before you've tried it. That's the rule."
Sticking her tongue out at him, she nibbled at the end of it. "Blech. I knock it. Take it back and gimme something good."
The pickle was plucked from her hand and replaced with a few chocolate coated coconut clusters. "Better," she said.
"You'll be diabetic by forty. Are we there yet?"
"And your tongue is gonna shrivel up into a prune next month." She popped a cluster in her mouth and glanced at the GPS. "Almost," she mumbled around bites. "Few more minutes. That might even be it up ahead."
Tangle-limbed greenery had shrouded the roadside view for miles. The GPS flicked between offline functioning and catching satellite properly. Ahead the road curved sharply to the left and down, but straight ahead was a dropoff. She couldn't make out too much, but there were branches poking up along the edge. Beyond those? A precarious tower.
Arthur shuddered. "Gods, I hope not. Looks like someone was playing jenga with whole life-sized linkin' log shacks."
"Cheer up, Squire. You can probably see where it's reinforced when we get in close. Wake Mystery, would you? Looks like a few more minutes of windy road, but we're almost there."
Vivi craned her neck back hard as she took in the house from its front lawn. She didn't need Arthur to tell her she was looking at an untenable dwelling. What started off as a run-of-the-mill decrepit mansion took a hard curve up toward the sky on the right side. The right side jutted up through several layers of what looked like large, remodeled outdoor sheds stacked on top of each other and held up by wooden stilts and… and even…
"Did they rely on a tree as part of the support for that?" she muttered. "Is that thing still alive?"
Arthur clenched his hair with both hands, his jaw hanging loose. "It's… even the main MANSION is halfway on STILTS. Is one of those shacks in the stack a motorboat? IT IS! What crackpot built this?!"
Vivi smacked his arm, lightly. "Don't be rude. A large family used to live here, and it's still standing. Three or four generations got use out of it. It has to be sounder than it looks."
"Oh, no. No. No, no no no NO! If you think I'm setting one foot in… and if you think YOU'RE setting one foot… where are you–VIVI!"
She was halfway up the multi-landing front steps by the time Arthur caught up and grabbed her arm. Annoyed, she tried to pry his fingers loose. "Look, Squire, do you sense something dangerous, here?"
"I don't have to 'sense' anything, I just have to open my eyes!"
"No, I mean it. Is there something lurking in there," she pointed at the house, "that you feel we can't handle?"
"Vivi!" Arthur dug his fingers into her arm. "Why can't you accept that my regular senses say this is a bad idea?" His voice kept rising. "Why can't you just LISTEN when I say THAT PLACE COULD COLLAPSE ANY SECOND? WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO LISTEN TO ME?"
Vivi caught a furious reply right on the edge of her tongue, snapping her teeth shut. She yanked free of Arthur's grip and sat down on the step, frowning down at her lap. The hurt and anger in his voice was too reminiscent of her own accusations.
Was she not pushing him past what he was comfortable with? Again?
Wasn't this the sort of thing that had led to the incident in the cave?
How much of that incident was your fault, Vivi?
Mystery nosed his way into her lap, butting up against her chest. Absently, she stroked his back. Lewis had warned her to pay more attention to Arthur's intuition for danger. She'd thought that only meant a sort of supernatural dangersense, but…
She released her breath through clenched teeth. "I don't like this," she muttered.
Arthur squatted a couple steps down from her, facing up. His face was still tight, but cautious. He looked like someone hot on a trail littered with landmines. "What exactly don't you like?"
"Going slow. Double checking. Avoiding things. Hot trails go cold, you know. And how are we supposed to deal with whatever's bugaboo around here if we can't go in and inspect the situation?" She threw out her hands. "Are we just supposed to drop every case you get nervous about? Do we dissolve the Mystery Skulls? How far does your veto power go, Arthur? We drove all this way and I was really looking forward to doing a case, and… and it just feels like you've got no give, here."
"Last time I gave–" He stopped that sentence cold, then plunked down on his rear. He folded and unfolded his hands, working his jaw. Vivi let him comb through his thoughts for the right words.
Finally, he looked up. "Let's just say, I feel the same way about you, okay? It's like you have to follow up every single lead, traipse through every condemned building. I just…" He trailed off and looked down. Raising his left arm, he flexed prosthetic fingers, one at a time. "I don't want to beat you over the head with this, Vivi. I really don't. But the fact is that we lost a lot last time we went charging in and I was not okay going in there to begin with. I just didn't push it. I didn't tell you how badly I wanted to turn around and leave. And look where we are now because of it."
If she could pull in away from the edges of her body, she would have. She couldn't look him in the face anymore. "So it's my fault? You blame me?"
There was a pause. "Yes. And no."
"That's not an answer."
"Says you. So, yeah, you picked out a stupid-dangerous looking cave, but then… I didn't say anything." The words trickled out slower. "And on top of that… I went in wanting… I was envious. But. I never said anything. I just… looked away whenever it hurt. So… I don't think blame works, here. We didn't… nobody meant to hurt anyone. We just… did."
Mystery whined once, but said nothing. Vivi managed to unfold enough to scratch his drooping ears.
"I need to think about all that," Vivi said, her throat thick. "But… what now?"
There was silence between them for a minute or two. Then Arthur blew out his lips. "Well. We're waiting on Mr. Finch to let us in. I'll walk around the property and eyeball it some more. When he comes, let's ask him to give us as much info as he can, both about how stable the structure is and this curse he keeps talking about. I might be willing to go into the main building, but unless there are vital clues missing, we don't go up the linkin-log tower. I can bend that far."
Vivi nodded her head and stood. "Yeah. Fine. I'll take whatever side of the house you don't, for now."
"Vee–"
"I need some alone time." She turned and walked off to the left. "I won't go inside until you're ready. I'll get what I can off the garage area. Let's meet back at the front steps in half an hour." She paused as a furry coat brushed her leg. "Alone-alone time, Mystery. Stick with Arthur. I'll be back."
Mystery did not like this place. It wasn't the sort of hackles-raised alarm he'd had about the cave, but something was sour about the area. And he certainly sided with Arthur on the state of the house.
And then there was Vivi. Her behavior bewildered him. He couldn't remember the last time she pushed him away like that. He felt foolish, staring after her with all the hurt of an abandoned pup as she made her way around the corner of the garage. He was ages older than her. Her immature behavior shouldn't sting like that.
"Figures. Always going off half-cocked, like it's never going to fall apart under her feet." Arthur's caustic words brought Mystery about-face. His expression was bleak and bitter. The light he'd so recently gotten back into his face was nowhere to be seen. And he… he smelled different.
"Maybe I'm the ghost around here," he grumbled, "for all she hears me. It's always been like this. Why do I even bother?"
Mystery's fur stood up, but he kept his teeth behind his lips and forced a calm into his voice that he didn't feel. "Arthur, can you hear me?"
Arthur didn't look over. "Yeah. I hear you. I guess you can hear me. Unlike some people. Why?"
"What is happening inside you right now?"
At that, Arthur did look over. Panic twisted his face and he scrambled backward on his rear. "You've gone all puffball. What do you sense? Is something happening to me? Oh gods! What?"
"Arthur."
He began babbling, "We have to run, now! No… no you have to grab Vivi and run! Don't let her near me!"
"Arthur!" Mystery barked. It echoed softly around them. "Those aren't the words of the possessed."
Arthur flopped onto his back, his chest heaving. Mystery approached slowly, putting each paw down as loudly as he could, and laid his weight across Arthur's chest. The heartbeat hammering away beneath him slowed a little at the contact.
"You're most certainly not possessed," Mystery soothed. "That reaction just now was wholly Arthur. But something is different. Your anger is… more overt than usual. Louder. Are those really your feelings?"
Arthur didn't answer at first, too focused on breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. Mystery waited until he finally answered, "Yeah. Those are my feelings. But, they were… not that huge, before. Like, this feeling just got bigger than my whole body. And the words feel different than mine."
Mystery lifted one ear. "Different words than you'd choose?"
"Yeah. I keep getting words like… like 'collapse' or 'fall apart'. Like somehow I'm the one holding everything together? And this whole rant about never listening… I mean, yeah I feel like Vivi doesn't listen that well, but I can't stop thinking about a whole other level of not listening that isn't… isn't really about Vivi." His eyes focused a little more and he frowned. "It's like… everything I was already feeling is amplified? And also tangled up with something else, or someone else." His eyes darted back to Mystery. "You're positive I'm not being possessed? Because if I am…" his throat spasmed, cutting off his words.
Mystery licked his cheek once. "No, you're not. And no, there would be no 'finishing the job' if you were. Don't look at me like that. It doesn't take a mind-reader to know where that sentence was headed. You're a ridiculously anxious pup, you know."
There. A ghost of a smile on his face. Then it washed away, replaced with an expression that was all hard lines and edges. "It's still there, the feeling."
"Tell me more about it. You may be picking up signals from whatever happened here."
"It's the same things I told you already." His breathing was ragged. "Loud, angry screams about not listening. And… a horrible… hollowness. Like… like I'm dying slowly, and I know it, and I don't care." He sucked in a breath through his teeth. "Haven't felt that since… since Yettle found me again. But, it's… it's not mine. Not my emptiness."
"How can you tell it isn't yours?"
Arthur pushed himself up, and Mystery slid down into his lap. Arthur turned his head, scanning the front of the house. "Haven't had that feeling in a long time. It's mostly healed over–filled up with better things. This feeling is like… almost like I've been kidding myself about healing at all, and that I've really just been withering away for as long as I can remember. And it's… it's outside of me? I'm empty outside of myself… hah… for all the sense that makes." He lifted a hand and gestured vaguely at the house. "Something over there is dying."
Mystery laid his ears back. "I suppose if we really must explore the house, then–"
"No." Arthur's voice was quiet, now. "Not in the house." His hand drifted to the right, pointing at the architectural atrocity stabbing up into the sky. He grimaced. "Shit. I really did not want to crawl around in that."
Mystery gave a growl of agreement. "You are sure it's in there?"
"I'm not sure of anything right now except that I'm not feeling totally like myself. And that I don't like it." He paused. "And that the feeling is coming at me hard from that side of the house. But also from… under me?" He lifted his hand off the ground and stared at the patch of grass under his hand as if it would tell him something.
Mystery rose to his paws. "I think it is time to get Vivi back here and up to speed. We need all heads together on this."
"No, wait. Wait a minute." Arthur put his hand back down, the frown deepening. "Under me and over there. Under… and…" his head snapped up. His eyes refocused on the tower. "Roots."
Mystery paused a moment, then whuffed softly. "Roots. Are you saying that you…?"
"I think I need to talk to their tree."
Note: Seems to be coming up on almost a year since my last update here, my apologies. It's kind of been crazy, and I think my fic-writing is slowing way down in general. I don't think I'll ever fully stop fic-writing, but maybe possibly I might finally be cracking open original writing one baby step at a time. So, theoretically, fic-writing is starting to take its place as a hobby instead of a main drive. Also I've been trying so hard to finish up Laughter Lines, which is the final fic in the longest-running highest word-count saga I've ever written. I'm three chapters from the end of that, wish me luck…
Also, I'm aware I left Lewis and Dib in a horrific cliffhanger moment, I'm very sorry. I always hate it when fic-writers I follow leave me at a cliffhanger for months at a time, and then the next update is about a different group on a much lesser cliffhanger, yet here I am. All I can tell you is that Lewis' story cannot move forward until the Skulls are ready to regroup, so I have to deal with Arthur and Vivi and their case first. I don't think that will take longer than this and one more chapter.