What Fools these Morsels Be!
By William Easley
(Fall 2018)
1-Nose to the Grindstone, Ear to the Ground
As September wound down, Dipper and Wendy both felt stressed about college. He was nominally a sophomore, she a junior (because she'd taken an advance year of college courses at a community college before transferring to Western Alliance University). However, Dipper was making every effort to catch up to his wife, who was making every effort to get a little ahead herself. For one thing, they were both taking an online class every Monday and Wednesday—same class, and they helped each other. But mere overloading was only the beginning.
Western Alliance University had both an exemption plan and a challenge plan. The exemption plan said a student could exempt a course if he or she or they (WAU's new effort at pronoun inclusion had kicked in that term) had relevant educational experience, even in high school, and could pass a typical midterm and final examination in the course. The challenge plan said a student with no formal experience in a course's subject could also challenge a course by completing three major assignments, taking the final, and passing an oral exam presented by three faculty members.
Dipper was good at mathematics. He successfully exempted Advanced Calculus, then in the course of four weeks challenged—and passed—Complex Analysis and Point Set Topology, though both of those made him sweat. Literature was easy for him, too. Once he'd taken care of the math courses, he decided to challenge a senior-level lit course called Supernatural Elements in British Fiction. That meant he had to read some tough material—Beowulf, four of the Canterbury Tales, Dr. Faustus, both Hamlet and Macbeth, and the only manual on combatting witches written by a king, Daemonology.
Then he faced selections from Paradise Lost, plus an astonishingly tedious gothic novel dealing with magic, demons, and incest called The Monk, and his choice of four books from a list of a dozen that carried supernatural-themed literature into the twentieth century.
Sometimes the language was almost as hard to read as one of Grunkle Ford's ciphers. There was Old English ("Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, / þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, / hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.") and Middle English ("And whan this maister that his magyk wrought / Saugh it was tyme, he clapte his handes two, / And farewel! al oure revel was ago.").
He zipped through Hamlet and Macbeth, since he'd read both in AP English, slogged through Daemonology and The Monk, then chose books he was already familiar with—The Castle of Otranto, Wuthering Heights, Dracula, and as the twentieth-century representation, Many Dimensions. He didn't know anything about the author (Charles Williams) or his work, but Grunkle Ford's experience when the Portal dragged him into the Multiverse decided him on that work.
Twelve books, and he was determined to read two a week. It wound up taking him nearly eight weeks, but in October Dipper turned in an essay ("The Enduring Witch," a study of the treatment of witches in four of the books he'd read), took the midterm and final exam (each featuring fifty objective questions—fill-in-the-blank, matching, multiple choice, like that—and a brief essay question), and then sat before a panel of three English professors, two of whom had taught him in class, and passed with—well, not no sweat, but at least with a minimum of perspiration and flying colors.
He planned next to challenge two elective courses. One had to be in science, so he would tackle Introduction to Botany, and one had to be in social studies, and for that one he chose Geography of the Pacific Northwest. Wendy had taken classes covering both subjects, though not those exact courses, and she tutored him (it took about ten minutes of their touch telepathy at a time) and he was confident of passing both.
With the regular course load, he was taking, exempting, or challenging thirty-three semester hours—which meant that if he succeeded, considering the hours he had earned as a freshman, he would be a junior in January, catching up to Wendy. Then he'd have to start the whole grind over, doing the same thing for spring term but with harder courses.
It was some consolation that Ford had done a very similar thing in Backupsmore. In five years there, he'd earned two bachelors' degrees, two masters' and twelve doctorates, only four of them honorary. Dipper considered he had a way to go before rivalling Ford as a first-class academic nerd. Still, it was a struggle.
Wendy wasn't working quite that hard, but she was challenging three courses that were not major requirements. With any luck and some night courses in summer term, they both would be ready to graduate at the end of the fall term in 2019. Grunkle Stan was pushing them to do that.
As for Mabel, she had already exempted a bunch of arts courses at Olmsted: Intro to Black and White Design, Basic Three-D, Methods and Materials of Painting and, without even blinking, four more courses in fabric arts. And even at that, she had landed a role in the fall musical, Carnival, along with designing and building the four hand puppets used in the show—a purple walrus named Horrible Henry, a dancing diva named Marguerite, a sly fox named Reynardo, and a wistful clown called Carrot Top. Both the rest of the cast and the audiences raved about the puppets. Truth to tell, Mabel had almost given up on the fox puppet, but in the end she pushed through—and gave the fox features reminiscent of Russ, a were-fox boy who had once loved her, but that's another story.
Anyway, seeing Reynardo perform gave her misty eyes sometimes.
And much to her surprise, Mabel was cast as Lili, the lonely but optimistic orphan girl who joins a traveling carnival and then has to deal with being the object of the affections of practically every male cast member, plus three of the puppets. It wasn't that she couldn't pull it off—heck, she had played Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady and Kate Monster in Avenue Q—but Lili was almost always on stage, and being in a musical did take a lot of time. Anyhow, she too found herself incredibly busy.
Which was a blessing, because that distracted her from her feelings of loneliness as she missed her fiancé, Teek O'Grady, who was off in film school in Atlanta, Georgia, of all improbable places. They face-timed twice in short sessions during the school week and then had a long conversation every Saturday or Sunday night. They missed each other and were already making plans for what they would do during the winter break, when they'd be back in Gravity Falls.
Life bumped along, as life does, with minor problems—Mabel had to put her RAV4, Black Beauty in the shop, borrowed Dipper's car for three days, and somehow dinged the driver's door, though she insisted the car must have been hit while parked, possibly by a small meteorite.
Her dog, Tripper, showed up one day in September with a friend who looked like a strange, shy youngish puppy, similar to Tripper in general layout and design, but with bigger ears and a fluffy tail and light-tan fur. Then the brilliant Tripper used his alphabet blocks to explain that the shy newcomer wasn't a friend, but "MY SNO."
OK, Tripper was brilliant but a bit dyslectic. "You've got a sno?" Mabel asked, shocked. "I mean, a son? I thought you were fixed!"
They took the puppy to a vet, who told them, "You know what you have here? This is a coydog—part dog, part coyote."
Such hybrids can be pets, they learned—but the owner had to be careful. Coydogs tend to go in one of two temperamental directions: Assertive and aggressive or rather timid, gentle, and friendly. This one, fortunately, held down the latter end of the spectrum. He was playful and winsome, loved snuggling and petted, and obeyed Tripper and usually any human. Mabel had him checked out, vaccinated, and promptly got him a license and a collar and gave him a name. Don Coyote.
Don't blame me, it was Mabel.
Tripper was clearly now the leader of the pack of two, and soon DC, as they called him, adapted to life as a pet—snoozing in the sun on the deck, coming in for meals, learning tricks (though not reading. He was bright, but not a genius like his dad).
The house owned by Grunkles Stan and Ford and inhabited by Wendy, Mabel, and Dipper for their college experience, was pretty far out in the country, so they didn't have to worry about the dogs going nuts when trick-or-treaters showing up at Halloween. None came that far.
They were even easy enough in their confidence to let the doggies stay home alone on October 27, when they went to a Halloween Dance at Olmsted.
The next morning was Sunday, and they got up late.
They were at the breakfast table with the TV on in the living-room area when the news came on. Tripper and DC were mooching for handouts, though they never legally received people food. This is not to say that Tripper, at least, did not occasionally shoplift a burger left on the table while the owner went back to the car to get her forgotten cola. But at least he always crumpled the wrapper and dropped it in the trash bin.
On TV, the news lady said, "A group of four campers seems to have become lost in central Oregon. KAAB-TV's Peter Symonds is on the spot in Gravity Falls, Oregon, to tell us about the mystery. Peter, where are you now and what do the authorities know about this strange disappearance?"
"Wait, what?" Dipper said, looking up from his stack of pancakes. "Gravity Falls is never on the news!"
He, Wendy, and Mabel left the dining table to sit on the sofa and watch as the young blond reporter ("Hunky!") Mabel pronounced stood in front of the City Hall, microphone in hand.
He was saying, "In this quiet mountain town, the trouble began as a late-fall getaway for two couples who loved camping. Last Wednesday they went hiking in the woods. The couples were Wallace and Jane Gormley and Harold and Miranda Loquette of Bellevue, Washington. As of Friday, everything seemed normal. On Friday morning, Mrs. Gormley's sister received a call from her saying that the woods were beautiful and that the four campers hoped to visit a small geyser field that day and that she would text some photos. The photos never came. When on Saturday Mrs. Gormley's sister tried to phone but failed to reach either her sister or brother-in-law, she became alarmed and called authorities, who found this puzzling scene."
"I know where that is," Wendy said. "Not far from our hot spring, Dip."
"It's a mess, though!" exclaimed Mabel.
The footage showed a four-person tent, collapsed and partly burned, as well as scattered equipment—a small camp stove, some boots, bits and pieces of food wrappers and other debris. "The campsite, as you can see, looks abandoned. Something, possibly freak high winds, collapsed the tent, and part of it fell on the embers of a campfire. No sign of any people was found at the site."
The scene changed. "Oh, God, it's Grunkle Stan," groaned Dipper.
Stan, in a respectable blue suit and without his fez or eyepatch, stood beside Peter Symonds, who said, "I'm here with the Mayor of Gravity Falls, Stanley Pines. Mr. Pines, do the police have any leads in this case?"
"They're workin' on it," said Stan gravely. "If there are any clues to be found, we're gonna find 'em and follow 'em."
"Are these woods dangerous?"
Stan shrugged. "Eh, any wilderness area can have its perils. We do have bears and other predators, but since there's no sign of violence at the campsite, we think that most of the damage done there was probably the result of foraging raccoons. We're calling in an expert to help us perform a drone search of the whole area."
"And who is the expert?"
"President of a nearby graduate school that specializes in mysterious sciences," said Stan.
Mabel bounced on the sofa. "Grunkle Ford's in on it!"
"What are the chances of the campers being found safe?" asked Symonds.
"Well, Pete," rumbled Stan, "if the campers have experience in the wild, there's food to be found there, and shelter, and places of safety. If they can orient themselves, from most anywhere in the Valley they could head east and eventually find their way to town. And there are houses, farms, and logging roads up I there. I don't think it's time to panic. We have high hopes of bringin' 'em out safe and sound."
"We all join in those hopes," said Symonds. "Back to the studio now."
Dipper took out his phone. "Calling Stan?" asked Wendy.
"Ford," he said. "He may need help."
"Mystery Trio!" Mabel said.
"Sh. Oh, hello, Grunkle Ford. Yes, nice to hear your voice too. What's this about somebody disappearing in Gravity Falls? Yeah . . . I see . . . OK, well, if you need . . . Thanks, keep us posted."
"What did he say?" asked Wendy.
Dipper put away his phone. "Not time to panic yet. He hasn't arrived at the campsite, but his gut feeling is it's just one of those things. Nowadays Gnomes and the Multibear and the Manotaurs help out anybody who's lost. Well, the foxes and Manotaurs don't do it directly, but they let Soos or Grunkle Stan know and lead them to the lost people."
"Guys," Mabel said, "we got another mystery—right here."
They looked around. Three plates were on the floor. They had not heard a sound from the dogs. Not one trace of the pancakes remained.
"Tripper!" Dipper scolded, his hands on his hips. "Which one of you stole our breakfast?"
Tripper pointed at CD, who pointed at Tripper.
"Yep," Wendy said. "Two smart dogs, all right."
Not quite two hours later, Dipper's phone rang. It was Grunkle Ford with what he admitted was "an unreasonable request."
Dipper hung up and asked Wendy and Mabel, "Who's up for a helicopter ride to Gravity Falls?"
"Let me get a barf bag!" yelled Mabel.
"Dude," Wendy said, "I don't need touch telepathy. Ford needs us, right?"
"Ford," Dipper agreed, "says he needs us."
What Fools these Morsels Be!
(Fall 2018)
2-Fight to the Falls
They had a huge back yard. Grunkle Ford sent the GPS coordinates to Agent Hazard, who would check out a chopper from the Agency airport in a highly secret clearing in the woods near the Oregon/Washington border, fly to the Del Norte Airport, refuel, and pick them up right at home. That put her arrival time around noon, and then the trip to Gravity Falls would take only an hour, Ford told Dipper.
Dipper blinked. "What? How fast does a helicopter fly?"
With a chuckle, Ford said, "This is a gas turbine model, Mason. And it's been, shall we say, upgraded by Fiddleford. I'm not at liberty to disclose specifics, but let me mention that two hundred and sixty miles per hour is in the range of average."
OK, so they had nearly two hours to pack. "What are we gonna do if we miss school tomorrow?" Mabel asked.
"Um—I suggest we email all of our teachers—and your drama director and my coach—and say we've been called away to a family emergency," Dipper said.
Mabel gave him a head-tilted suspicious squint. "Are you sure you're Dipper? You're always so—" she waved her arms and bobbed her head—"Hey, I'm the responsible twin. I never color outside the lines."
Wendy, getting an overnight bag down from the front closet shelf said, "It's cool, Mabes. None of us has missed a day so far, and we're all carrying respectable GPAs. Heck, I know one guy in my Advanced Plant Genetics class that's already skipped a whole week and is still scrapin' by with a C. And our excuse isn't really a lie—our family's asked us to respond to an emergency, am I right?"
"OK," Mabel said. "I can miss rehearsal tomorrow night, 'cause it's all choral practice. But I absolutely gotta be back on Tuesday."
"We'll see what we can do," Dipper told her. "We'll all need jackets, I guess. It'll be coolish up in the hills. And my backpack with my paranormal stuff in it. And—hey, what about the dogs?"
"What about 'em?" Mabel asked. She called Tripper, and he trotted in, DC following. Mabel knelt on the floor and took one of Tripper's paws in her hand. "Listen," she said. "Me and Wendy and Dipper are gonna be away tonight and most of tomorrow, OK? We're gonna trust you two to guard the house. I'll leave plenty of water and enough doggy chow to last you for three days, just in case. No eating it all up front! Tripper, do you understand me?"
Tripper yipped and tapped his paw in her hand once—his way of saying, "Yes."
"Look into my eyes," she said. "Be honest. Will you and DC solemnly promise not to gorge yourselves?"
Tripper seemed to think it over for a long moment. Then, a little more softly, he yipped and tapped once.
"This isn't like snitching leftovers from the table, now. I'm gonna trust you," Mabel said. "DC, do you understand?"
DC just stared at her. Tripper gave his offspring a meaningful look. With a long sigh, DC yipped once.
Tripper stared at him for a moment and then shook his head as if asking, "Kids, what're you gonna do, right?"
Mabel arranged eight different bowls of food in groups of two. Then she told Tripper, "OK, when the sun's coming in the deck window and touches the wall, you and DC eat these two, right? Then tomorrow when you see the sun in the front windows, you eat these next two . . .."
Tripper got it. He was a smart dog. True, he couldn't resist unguarded pancakes, but he did feel a loyalty to the pack, and as far as he was concerned, Mabel was the leader.
Deputy Supervisor Amy Hazard made great time and before half-past eleven they heard the thrum of an approaching helicopter. The dogs, excited, jumped up and leaned on the back sliding-glass door as the chopper—sleek and dark gray and a little evil-looking, to tell the truth—settled in the back yard.
The human part of the pack took their suitcases and Dipper's backpack downstairs and left through the basement entrance, but Agent Hazard, as trim as ever and looking, um, sleek and a little evil in her close-fitting black jumpsuit, met them. "Use your john?" she asked with a smile.
"Sure, c'mon, I'll show you. Oh, right, you've been here before!" Mabel said. "Dipster, take my baggage! We'll be back in a minute!"
Dipper hefted her pink suitcase—a carry-on, but one that tested the size limits—and slung his backpack over one arm. Wendy, already carrying their overnight bag, said, "I got this," and took the backpack. They weren't quite sure where to stow the stuff aboard the helicopter.
Dipper said, "I think there's a panel in the nose somewhere, but I don't know how to open it."
"They'll be back soon," Wendy said. "Don't sweat it, man. You nervous about flying?"
He shrugged. "I don't get airsick. I even flew in a supersonic jet once. I don't know about helicopters, though. Not that much experience with a long flight in one, and the first time I was kinda unconscious."
"Nothing to it," Wendy said.
"Wonder what's taking them so long?"
With a chuckle, Wendy said, "Girls and restrooms, Dip! Maybe Amy's askin' Mabes if she's really happy with her and Teek's relationship."
"Oh, yeah," Dipper said. "I forgot she's, um, partial."
"Here they are," Wendy said. "Dip, man, you're blushing!"
"Anxious, I guess," Dipper said.
Agent Hazard—these days Deputy Director Hazard—they had a hard time thinking of her as Amy—popped open a generous luggage compartment that already held a small go-bag and some paranormal weaponry, they stored their stuff, and with a cheerful smile, she had them all climb in and buckle up. "You've got interesting dogs," she told Wendy and Dipper. "Everybody strapped in? OK, here we go."
She made contact with someone on the radio—probably someone from the Agency, Dipper thought—got permission to take off, and the engine revved up, the blades swirled, and up they went, the house and its surroundings shrinking away as the chopper swiveled, tilted, and set off north by northeast.
Mabel had donned a headset, and she and Amy carried on a conversation that was difficult for Dipper and Wendy to hear, but at least it kept her from being airsick. Faster than Dipper had supposed was possible, he caught sight of snow-crested mountains which fell away as the helicopter passed over them, and then there lay the big circular valley of the Falls.
Wendy was holding his hand. Looks like we're landin' in the Woodstick parking lot, Dip.
—Yeah, nobody uses it much this time of year. In November Grunkle Stan hauls in a bunch of Christmas trees and sells them from the lot.
They set down, the engine cut out, and the blades creaked to a gradual halt. "Everybody OK?" asked Hazard. "Yes? Great, you guys disembark. I saw your great-uncle's car heading this way, and he should show up any second now."
"Where are you going?" Mabel asked.
"Gotta fly the chopper back to Wolverine Base. But I'll drive down and join the rest of you in about two hours."
"Thanks," Dipper told her.
"Doing my job. Let me pop the storage compartment."
By the time they had unloaded the suitcases and backpack, Grunkle Ford stopped a few yards away in his deep-blue Lincoln. For some reason, he really liked dark-colored Lincolns, and in the years Dipper had known him, Ford had owned about five of them, either black or a very deep blue. Once Dipper had asked him why, and Ford's answer had been a chuckle. "Stanley loves El Diablos. When we were kids, I always told him classic Lincolns were better, so—I suppose it's a sibling rivalry situation! Climb in and while we drive, I'll fill you in on what we know."
They headed for the Shack, and Ford said, "The missing campers aren't the sort to just wander off randomly. One of them, Jane Llewellyn Gormley, is a former park ranger who served in Yellowstone and Yosemite. Her husband Wallace is an avid fisherman who knows the outdoors well. The other couple, the Loquettes, don't have formal credentials, but they've been on fishing and camping trips alone and with the Gormleys many times before."
"What was the condition of the camp?" Wendy asked. "Like, were there signs of wild animals or—other stuff?"
"Well, it appears as though the campers had set up everything for the night. Food hung in a bag suspended high over a tree branch and no bear had disturbed it. The tent lay collapsed, disarranged and draggled. Sheriff Blubs—"
Dipper groaned. "Is he in charge?"
"Yes, but he's asked for my forensic help."
"That's something," Dipper said. "Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt."
"The sheriff says he thinks aliens abducted the four. However, my reading of the clues suggests that he tent collapsed while the four were scrambling to get out. Something must have alarmed them. Later raccoons must have come along and scattered some things. We don't know what the campers wore when this happened. But they each had three outfits left in the tent that the racoons pulled out. A tent flap charred in the remains of a banked campfire, but the tent canvas was fire-resistant. We didn't see any traces of human footprints around the tent. However, you'll get a chance to see all that for yourselves."
"Hey, Grunkle Ford," said Mabel, "How about bringing in some drones to—"
"Thank you, Mabel," said Ford. "That's a brilliant idea. We're already doing it. We have three drones flying a spiral pattern out from the campsite. So far, no luck, though." After a pause, Ford added, "Blubs wants to mobilize a hundred volunteers to comb the woods."
"Uh-uh," Wendy said. "Bad idea."
"Why do you say that?" asked Ford.
"'Cause the volunteers won't be woods people. They'll tromp all over clues and get off on tangents. It's way better for these searches to be done by pros."
"I completely agree," Ford said as he parked in the Mystery Shack lot. "We have a few hours of daylight left. Soos is letting us use his Jeep from here on in. We're going in from Timber Ridge Trail."
"Sure," Wendy said. "Old logging trail. I know it well. It's OK with four-wheel drive. Let me take it in?"
"You mean drive it?" Ford asked. "Of course. I trust you completely."
Stan came out of the Shack. "Hiya, kids," he said cheerfully. Then he gave them a sharper glance. "Holy Moley, you on starvation diets? You've all lost weight!"
"Just been busy," Mabel said, hugging him. "And Dipper's keeping up his running practice, remember. Hey, do I have time to run in and say hi to Harmony and Little Soos?"
"Make it fast," advised Ford.
She did, but it was still the best part of an hour before Wendy stopped the Jeep at the point where the logging trail became impossibly overgrown. "Now we go on foot," Ford said. "It's about a mile through the woods, not hard going."
"Gettin' colder," Wendy said. "Betcha the first snowfall will hit before the middle of November."
She knew the way as well as Ford, and she and Dipper led the way as Mabel and Ford followed up. They emerged in a clearing just about big enough to hold a four-person tent and a small campfire. Sheriff Blubs was there, hands on hips, watching Deputy Durland creep around with a tape measure.
"Any progress, Sheriff?" asked Ford as they approached.
Blubs tilted his Mountie hat back on his head. "We're accumulating data," he said. "For instance, now we know the source of the fire."
"It was the embers in this here circle of rocks," said Durland helpfully.
"Yes, the campfire," Ford agreed. "We knew that from the beginning."
"But now it's been forensically confirmed," said Blubs. "Deputy, give them some more data."
"It's eighteen feet from the tent to that tree there," said Durland proudly. "And it's twenty-one to the next tree. And then on this side, it's sixteen feet from the tent to this here rock. And—"
While Durland was reeling off numbers, Dipper took his anomaly detector from his backpack and without making a fuss about it, switched it on. The screen showed only random ticks and low-level spikes in most of the modes, just the normal random weirdness activity for the area. Nothing indicated ghosts, killbillies, manotaurs, zombies, or even Gnomes. Nothing more esoteric showed up.
However, the notion of Gnomes led Dipper to beckon Mabel over. "Let's get away from the others," he told her quietly. They moved about a hundred steps away until a tangle of evergreen brush and deadfall trees hid them from the camp. "Call Jeff," Dipper said.
Glancing around, Mabel put two fingers in her mouth and gave a sharp whistle. "Jeff," she said in a normal voice, "where you at, old ex-fiancé o' mine?"
It took time—they were far from the Gnomes' usual home territory—but after a few minutes, Jeff, bundled in a sweater with blue bunnies embroidered on a yellow field,* rustled out of the undergrowth. "Hi, guys," Jeff said, blinking. "Didn't know you were in the Falls."
"Investigating a disappearance," Dipper said. He filled the Gnomes' prime minister in on the mystery. "So I wondered, did you guys notice anything strange?"
Jeff shook his head. "We're moving underground for the winter right now, so not a lot of us are up in the trees this time of year. And we don't come this way often. Nothing her to forage for—but wait a minute." He lowered his head and seemed to be either listening carefully or sniffing the air or perhaps both at once. "Yeah, I can detect the scents of four unfamiliar humans. And something else. It's not—not anything I can definitely—what is that? Familiar, but I can't place it."
Dipper held up his anomaly detector. "I've run through all the paranormal threats I could think of."
"Not them," muttered Jeff. "Um—can that thing find stuff like wee folk? You know, them?"
"Fairies?" Mabel asked. "Yuck! Don't talk to me about fairies!"
Dipper was tuning the detector. "There's a trace," he said. "But—not an ordinary fairy. It's something strange."
"Believe me, brobro," Mabel said. "There's nothing stranger than the fairies!"
Whispering, Jeff asked, "You think not? Ever run up against a Gob-Hoblin?"
"No," Dipper said. "What can you tell me about them?"
"Just this," Jeff said. "Good luck!"
And he hustled away, vanishing after a few steps.
"Broseph," Mabel said quietly, "I got a bad feeling about this."
She wasn't alone.
*Jeff's sweater had been bought in the children's department of Toddler Togs at Gravity Malls and was sized for a human three-year-old. Gnomes liked to shop for clothes sometimes, but their choices were limited.
What Fools these Morsels Be!
(Fall 2018)
3. If You Go into the Woods
Grunkle Ford looked dispirited when Mabel and Dipper returned to the scene of the disappearance. Wendy was talking to the sheriff and deputy: "Dudes, come on! You're messin' up the ground!"
"Sorry, little lady," Blubs said, puffing up his chest. "We have police work to do. Data to gather. Clues to look for."
"Clues and data!" chimed in Durland. "Look-a there! That cloud is directly over the tent!"
"Mighty suspicious if you ask me," said Blubs with a grunt, tilting his head back to stare up into the sky.
"Arggh!" Wendy turned a look of angry frustration toward Dipper. "They're walkin' all over the ground!"
"It's too late," Ford said. "I've already scanned the area, and our local lawmen have already trampled out any sign of footprints."
"Hey, footprints!" yelled Durland. "I found two right behind me here!"
"Follow them and see where they go," Blubs ordered.
"They're his, dude!" yelled Wendy, balling her hands into fists.
Blubs held a finger up to his lips. "Shh! Let him have this."
"Grunkle Ford," Mabel asked, "did you find anything when you got here?"
"Alas, they got here first," Ford said. "A sister of one of the missing persons called the Gravity Falls Sheriff's Department—she'd thought to check on her sister's cell-phone satellite location device and gave them a specific spot—and these two professionals came out and started disturbing everything, without even taking photos. They brought two garbage bags and tossed everything they found in them, except the tent and a few things like the camp stove and cooking utensils. By the time I arrived—" he shrugged.
Dipper said, "I suggest we spiral out from here and look for any signs. Wendy's great at spotting tracks. Maybe if we get away from the tent, we'll run across something."
"That is definitely worth a try," said Ford. They started out. Blubs and Durland, now busy photographing clouds, didn't even notice.
As they walked, slowly surveying the ground, Dipper told Ford about meeting the Gnome and what he had said. "He called it a Gob-Hoblin," Dipper finished. "I've never heard of that one. Do you know it?"
"Negative," Ford said. "But if it's part of faerie lore, that's no wonder. The fairies of the Valley are both obsessively secretive and deliberately exasperating. Their domain is actually a limited parasite dimension, you know—"
"Whoa!" Wendy, a little in the lead, held out her arms. "Here's something."
"What?"
Carefully, Wendy knelt, her knee resting on a tussock of grass. "Partial boot print, see?"
"Looks like a horseshoe," Mabel said. "Oh, yechh! The unicorns are in on the snatch job!"
"Snatch job?" asked Wendy, blinking.
"Didn't you read the Dancy True books when you were little?" Mabel asked. "Dancy's friends at school were always getting kidnapped! Dancy True and the Missing Prom Queen! Dancy True and the Vanished Vixen! A snatch job is when somebody kidnaps somebody else, and it's usually the gym teacher or the janitor!"
"This isn't a horseshoe print, it's the toe of a boot," Wendy said. She took out her camera and photographed it from about six angles. "Look, there's another one."
Leaning over beside her, Ford stroked his chin. "Judging from the size, I'd speculate that the owner of the boot was a woman. Too bad this little stretch of damp sand is only three feet wide. Wait, though, why aren't the heels included in the print?"
"Somebody stole the boot heels!" Mabel exclaimed.
Dipper nudged her. "Now you're thinking like a Gravity Falls deputy."
Mabel slugged him.
"Ow! Cut it out, Sis! I think I know why just the toes show up."
"So do I," Wendy said, getting to her feet. "Whoever was in those boots was running hard. In that direction."
That direction was up a grassy hillside, toward a dark clump of trees that crowded close to each other.
"Let's see if we can find any other traces," Wendy said. "Wait a minute, though. I'll take a few long shots of the location. The tent's just on the other side of that rise there, so we have a rough direction of travel." She snapped six more shots.
As they headed through the knee-high grass, already dry with fall, Mabel said, "Uh, somehow I don't like the look of these trees."
"Nor I," said Ford.
"Oh, I don't mind the way you look," Mabel assured him.
He chuckled. "I mean I share your aversion, Mabel."
"Help yourself," she told him. "There's plenty to go around."
"Stop here," Ford said. "Wendy, what species of trees are those on this hill?"
"Um—that's funny," Wendy said. "I don't know."
Dipper felt a chill. Wendy was the equivalent of that old-time TV character Davy Crockett, raised in the woods and personally acquainted with every tree—or at least every species. Now that they had drawn closer, Dipper saw that the trees looked strange, gnarled in bizarre ways, their bark rugose with crooked channels and whorls, bulging with diseased-looking galls, a somehow disquieting deep gray tinged with purple. Their branches grew twisted and interlaced, the leaves drooped in bunches of dull gray-green, and somehow the shade beneath the trees was too dark, too quiet.
"This," said Ford, "is a very queer copse."
"Nope," Mabel said. "We left them behind at the tent. Hey-O!"
"A copse," Dipper told her, "is a clump of trees."
"Yeah, but these aren't any trees I recognize," Wendy said. "And I should—I mean, I rule in my forestry classes." She raised her phone and took a photo.
"I wonder if the running woman went in there," Dipper said.
"Um—Dipper? Look at this."
She was holding up her phone. Dipper looked at the screen. "Whoa! Grunkle Ford, Wendy just took this picture of the trees."
Ford adjusted his spectacles. "As I suspected," he said. "Mason, use your anomaly detector—from here, please, don't approach any closer. See if there's a reading in the D2 scale."
Mabel leaned against Ford. "Wendy, you missed the shot!"
"No, I didn't, Mabes. This is what the camera sees."
The photo showed only a rounded grassy domes with a few pines, none of them more than about ten feet tall. The gnarly trees did not photograph."
"Great-uncle Ford," Dipper said, his voice strained, "the D2 reading is close to a hundred."
"And a hundred is the top of the scale," Ford muttered. "I'm going to call in Hazard for a fly-around. Let's see if we can keep this distance and pace around the hill—but no one go near the trees. They're eldritch."
Mabel whispered, "Are you really afraid of trees?"
"No," Ford said, taking out his satellite phone. "I'm terrified of what might be in them. S, this is A.D. Scramble level five. Good. Take a read on these coordinates. How soon can you fuel the chopper and—excellent. I need you to do an aerial survey, but five miles out slow your approach and contact me for exact directions. We've found something that's distorting space and time, and I don't know how far into the atmosphere the warp may extend. Excellent. Check in as soon as you're within five miles, and keep the scramble level this high."
Mabel looked at her brother. "Did you understand any of that?"
"Grunkle Ford wants Amy to fly a circuit around this stand of woods," Dipper said, "but not to go directly over it."
Ford put away his Agency phone. "She'll be here within forty-five minutes. Let's see if we can do a walkaround from a safe distance."
"It's gonna start getting dark in a couple of hours," Wendy said. "I'm not sure I want to be out here at night."
"I'm perfectly certain that I don't," Ford said. "Come on. Let's go."
From the unearthly grove of trees, someone, something, laughed. It was an inhuman chuckle, the laugh an amused wolf might make. A figure amazingly lithe and mostly human in shape leaped from the ground onto a contorted tree branch twenty feet from the roots. One would have to be careful to scale that tree.
Every foot or so, thorns projected out from the bark, thorns as long as a man's forearm, ivory-white along the shafts, deep rusty red for the last inches up to the needle tips. And the dull-silver sheened pale, oval leaves all turned on their twigs in unison, as though they were eyes watching . . . everything at once.
The creature, Gob-Hoblin or elf or whatever it was, leaped from branch-tip to branch-tip. They didn't even bend, as if it had no weight. At the highest point, the creature looked down at the group of humans. Closer, it thought to them. Come closer.
It realized that it should have placed a glamour on the trees. To human eyes seeing them as they were, they would be . . . intimidating. Oh, well, once seen, never unseen, too late now.
Yet humans were perverse. An owl, a rabbit, even a serpent, would see or at least sense something wrong on this hillside and would turn and hurry away.
A person . . . ha-ha.
Show a group of four people a vision of something dark and fuming with danger. They would all be afraid.
But at least one, if not all, of them would come to explore the darkness, to taste the danger.
Oh, humans were funny things. Full of play value.
The creature, whatever it was, reclined on a long, thin, limber branch far too frail for its apparent weight, and took something from its . . . clothing? Were those straps and strips and living leaves clothes?
Whatever. It lifted the instrument to its mouth.
It laughed again, softly, and began to play.
They were halfway around when Mabel stopped. "Listen!" she said.
Ford glanced at her. She had tilted her head back. "It's too early for the helicopter," he said. "Come on, we should be on the far side when Hazard shows up."
"It's beautiful," Mabel said dreamily. "The music."
Dipper took Wendy's hand. Do you hear—
—No. Nothing to hear, Dip. Grab her!
"Hey!" Mabel protested. "That hurts, Dipper! Turn loose of my arm!"
"Snap out of it," he said.
"But the music—"
"Mabes," Wendy said, "you're the only one hearing it."
"Mason, your anomaly detector, please." Ford took it and aimed it uphill.
"Aw," Mabel said. "It stopped."
"No reading," Ford said.
Dipper still grasped Mabel's left wrist. "Come on," he said. "Mabel, if you hear it again, tell us. Meanwhile I'm not letting you go."
"Aw, come on!"
"Listen to your brother," Ford said, unusually solemn. "It's eldritch, Mabel. It's eldritch."
What Fools these Morsels Be!
(Fall 2018)
4-Ruthless, Vast, and Gloomy Woods
Round and round and round they go,
Helpless as a fleeing doe,
Knowing not what they not know,
Whilst the music works them woe . . ..
The thing in the uncanny woods, the thing that was not remotely human, watched with the tense patience of a cat with eyes on an unaware mouse. The twisted, unearthly trees creaked and groaned and turned their leaves, and through their leaves like eyes watched the one who lay upon the branches careless, like a raptor or an owl.
Soon the night would come, the earth would fall dumb, no twitter of birds or sound of cricket's call, all the dark hours would silent lie.
The creature played strange music on its country pipes, a flow of notes without melody but pleasing to the mortal ear. Its hands, one eight-fingered, one ten, curled and twirled and found the stops that changed the notes. Its face, sharp angles of chin and nose, pursed lips, held an expression remote, yet cold, calm while still somehow filled with fierceness. Its sharp-slanted brows had the seeming of moss, its angled eyes had lids that closed sideways as it blinked, and the irises gleamed green as a newly unfurled leaf of clover, slit-pupiled.
Yet beyond the green lay a smoldering red light, like something fetched to earth by demon's hand.
And the smile, the smile, terrible to behold, row upon row of teeth like white spines.
Above the eyes, sprouting from low on the forehead and rising back and up, not hair but . . . twigs? Branching, interweaving.
Skin like bark. Arms strangely jointed. Legs . . . all wrong.
Whimpers from the small clearing in the midst of the strange trees distracted the musician. Closing its uncanny eyes, it listened to the mortals' dreams from below, and it smiled.
"Sleep," it crooned to the four minds locked in nightmare. "Sleep, sweets, slumber there while your souls are wreathed in fear."
Another voice moaned, and the musician's smile broadened. "Fly and flee and never be free, the fear that follows your heart hollows, till no room there be for naught but me."
It might have climbed down from the tree to suck the anguish each sleeper felt, but for the wind—
What wind is this, like none we've known?
Strong, strong, it beat down, a wind that fell fast to the ground—
And from the dimming twilight skies, a bright light stabbed into its eyes—
With a ferocious snarl, the musician turned away from the light and found the shelter of the woods' deep shades.
Something new was coming, something it had never encountered in the World Between.
It did not know the word "machine," but it sensed the intruder as a device made by humans, and instinctively it hated the flying thing that brought the wind and the pain.
It began to work a curse.
About a football field's length from the hilltop woods Amy Hazard set the chopper down. Ford led the others over, and though the still-whirling blades spun with adequate clearance, they all ducked as they boarded the chopper. "What kind of a job is it, Chief?" Amy asked as, last of all, Ford boarded and sat in the copilot's seat.
"Unknown," Ford said. "The trees are . . . disturbingly unusual. Our instruments indicate that the whole hilltop is an intrusion from some other reality. Did you see the campsite?"
"Affirmative."
"Is there enough space to land there?"
"I can do it, Chief. Hang on."
The engine screamed and the helicopter lifted vertically, then tilted as Hazard set a course for the crime scene. It was quite near, and after only seconds she set down again. "Mason," Ford said, "come with me."
They climbed out of the chopper. Blubs and Durland were taking selfies near the tent. "Dr. Pines," Blubs said, "you wanted our conclusions."
"Yes, please," Ford said. "What have you discovered?"
"In our judgment," Blubs said. "This right here is a mystery."
"Looks like four people just disappeared," Durland added helpfully.
"Now, with night coming on, we have to act fast," Blubs said.
"Yes, the night will be cold, and we don't know how the missing people are dressed," agreed Ford.
"Not that," Durland said. "Tonight the last part of a Duck-Tective three-parter's comin' on the TV."
"And we have just enough time to get home and see it!" Blubs said.
Ford blinked. "Ah. Excellent idea. Don't let us stop you!"
They set off for the place where they'd left their patrol car, Durland singing off-key: "Criminals are out of luck, when they face off with the duck, he's so cool and so effective, hey, hey, it's Duck-Tective!"
"You're going the wrong way," Dipper said. "Here, get in the Jeep and I'll drive you there."
"I'm comin' with you," Wendy said.
"Me, too," added Mabel.
"No, you ride back to the Shack in the helicopter with me," Ford told her.
"Aw. Can I drive?"
"Negative," Hazard said. "But if you behave, when we land at the Shack I'll take some photos of you at the controls."
"Let's get moving!" Mabel said.
Twilight was deepening. As the chopper lifted off, Ford looked down. The Jeep lights cut swaths through the dimness, and before Hazard made the turn for the Shack, he saw it stop as the two lawmen, to use the term so loosely that if it were a shoelace it would have tripped them, got into their own vehicle. Both cars rumbled down the old logging trail.
"Well," Ford said loudly, "at least we should be safe for tonight. We'll return early in the morning to—good Lord, look out!"
"Got it," Hazard said, moving the stick so the chopper pirouetted. "Where the hell'd they come from?"
"Bats!" Mabel shouted, staring out through the forward bubble. "Millions of 'em! So cute!"
"Not cute if they smash into the rotors," Hazard said. "Hold on, I'm going to try to get above them."
A living cloud had come from nowhere and moved as if it were one organism as it swirled and changed shape and pursued the helicopter. They could see the induvial bats, wings fluttering as the creatures twirled and bunched and thinned out again.
"Surely they wouldn't crash into us," Ford yelled. "Their sonar's too good for that!"
"I don't—think—they have any—choice!" Hazard jinked and spun the chopper and with effort got it to an altitude that seemed beyond the bats' capabilities.
"We're beating them!" Mabel said. "Go, go, go!"
They reached the Shack, landed, and all three leaped out of the chopper and dashed to the porch. Ford called Wendy's number and to his relief she answered right away—cell reception got dicey in the hills. "Wendy!" Ford barked, "there's a flock of bats that might make a try for you and Mason. Watch out for them! Where are you?"
"Close to the road, Dr. P. Blubs and Durland already made the turn, and we're there in less than a minute now—"
"Listen!" Ford said. "Stop, you drive, let Mason take one of the sonic pulsors—he'll know what it is—and if the bats try to attack you, tell him to aim it at them and fire. It'll scramble their sonar so they'll be disoriented—"
"We're on it! Later!"
"Do you think the bats really would try to get them?" Mabel asked.
"I think something is controlling the bats, possibly—make that probably—whoever or whatever kidnapped the campers," Ford said.
"Incoming!" Hazard called.
Ford looked up. The sky looked as if a storm cloud were approaching, wind and lightning in its belly—but it was a cloud of bats. "Mabel, inside!"
"Aw, Grunkle Ford! The Shack's shielded!"
"Not against ordinary animals. Go!"
Mabel did, but she ran upstairs to the bow window and stared out. The sun had gone behind the western cliffs, but its red light lingered.
"Chief, you'd better take cover, too," Hazard said, putting a hand on Ford's arm.
"Let's wait. It's possible the unicorn-hair field will repel them. Those are specimens of Lasionycteris noctivagans, the Silver-Haired Bat, harmless to humans and normally low-altitude fliers—but if they break through, get inside!"
The leading edge of the living cloud dived, arrow-straight—but swerved only yards from the porch, rose again, and then—
The bats set off not in a flock, but in individual directions, twos and threes and singles, fluttering away at no more than treetop height.
"The field held," Ford said. "That's a relief. And also a worry."
"I know the relief," Hazard said. "What's the worry?"
"The bats were not a paranormal phenomenon in themselves, the way eyebats are," Ford said. "But the fact that the barrier repelled them tells me that whatever sent them—whatever we're up against—is definitely paranormal."
"And evil," Hazard said.
"That," agreed Ford, "is my working hypothesis." He took out his phone again and dialed Dipper's number.
"We're on the way home, Great-Uncle Ford," Dipper said immediately. "We saw the bats, but they weren't interested in us. We're on the highway now. Wendy, what's our ETA?"
Wendy said, "Ten minutes, tops."
"We'll be back in—"
"I heard," Ford said. "Listen: the unicorn-hair field prevented the bats from reaching us. We're all safe. When you get here, have Wendy park the Jeep as close to the gift-shop door as she can. When you get out—run for the porch. I'm going to stand here with a quantum destabilizer pistol and keep guard until you're home."
"Got that," Dipper said. "Wendy's speeding, so we may be there sooner than she thought."
"Just stay safe," Ford said. He remembered Blubs and Durland's plans. "I don't think you need to fret about being stopped by the police for the next half-hour or so."
Full dark fell as Wendy braked the Jeep to a stop. She and Dipper held hands and ran for the porch, leaping over the three steps. Ford, standing in the open doorway, said, "Everything all right?"
"Fine," Dipper said. "Nothing after your phone call. You guys?"
"Safe and sound. Come in, come in."
In the parlor, Soos, Melody, and the two Ramirez kids, Harmony and Little Soos, were watching Duck-Tective. Mabel sat on the floor with the kids. Little Soos looked around and said, "Shh! The Fox is after them!"
"We'll be in the dining room," Dipper said.
"Man," Mabel commented. "This show just gets better and better!"
In the kitchen Wendy brewed a carafe of decaf. "So what's our plan?" she asked as she poured cups for Amy, Ford, and Dipper.
"There's definitely been an intrusion of otherness," Ford said.
Hazard waved away the cream. "Just black for me, thanks. Chief, do we call in backup?"
Ford thought about this as he added a spoonful of sugar to his own coffee. "Not . . . yet. Get Powers on the phone, though, and tell him to form a reserve strike team, six members, and poise them in the Mossy Run installation in case we need them in a hurry. I don't know what we're dealing with, and I won't order a full-on assault until we can be sure that the missing campers are either safe or . . . no longer a concern."
"Dead, you mean," Wendy said.
Ford shrugged. "We have to face that possibility."
Dipper sipped his cream-laced coffee and said slowly, "I don't think so. This doesn't feel like a case of possession or, you know, sacrifice. The woods on that hill—something in there is playing with us. I don't know how I know that, but I'm pretty sure that's the case. It's the kind of force that would toy with its victims. I—I don't know."
"Let's all turn in early tonight," Ford said. "We may have a long, hard day tomorrow."
As if by unspoken consent, they dropped the subject of the disappearances and the somehow unholy hill. Amy asked Wendy, "So how's married life, girl?"
"No complaints," Wendy said with a big smile. "In fact, it's great. I just wish that college wasn't making us work our butts off so we could enjoy it a little more."
"Good for you guys," Amy said with a somehow wistful smile. "Good for you guys."
Like many of its—his at the moment, though gender for its kind was like a costume that the Piper could don, change, or even drop at will—like many of his kind, the Piper in the woods had a short attention span. The new prey had managed to escape. No matter.
He had four to play with. At the moment, the four believed they were pigs and crept about the clearing, rooting and grunting and being most amusing. Considerately, because he did not wish his pets to die too soon, the Piper arranged for the cold to stay outside the woods. Inside, in the small clearing, it was not almost Samhain, but a soft, warm, nearly sultry Midsummer Eve.
One of the male pigs mounted a female.
The Piper watched their ridiculous, awkward mating and laughed aloud as they both squealed.
Tomorrow, he felt, the other four would return, seeking to understand him with their feeble human minds.
One, at least, heard the music.
And the music could draw her in.
And for the others—
For the others, she would be the bait.
What Fools these Morsels Be!
(Fall 2018)
5-The Shape of Fearful Things
A nervous Ford asked them all to stay inside the Shack for that night. He persuaded Abuelita, Soos, and Melody to move temporarily down the hill and into his and Lorena's house—which also had an anti-weirdness field around it. "I think you'll all be safer there," he said. "We have two guest rooms, and I'm sure the children will be comfortable camping in the cozy den."
"Is this, like, you know, some Guys in Black deal?" Soos whispered.
"Top secret," Ford assured him.
"You can count on us, Mr. Pines, dawg!" Soos said, saluting.
The kids thought of it as an adventure, a little unexpected trip, and Abuelita welcomed the opportunity for a little female chat with Lorena, whom she liked but with whom she'd not spent enough time to feel a true connection. She could teach the woman many, many things. How to make perfect tortillas, what a proper Mexican breakfast should be, the wonders of goat's milk, tomatillos, plantains. Poor Dr. Ford, he was so thin.
The Ramirezes packed and trundled down the hill in the pickup. Ford kept watch until they'd parked exactly where he told them—the truck safely inside the zone of protection—and then he hustled back to the Shack porch.
"Antsy, Chief?" asked a shadow he had not even noticed.
To Ford's credit, he didn't startle at the sound. "Oh, Amy. Yes, I suppose it shows. You weren't involved the time the Cipher effigy temporarily became a rift into the Nightmare Realm. That was a struggle. We almost lost a couple of our family then. I don't know, I may be getting too old for this." He rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger.
Hazard reached up to rub the back of his neck. "You're really tense. Chief, you're not too old. I know what it is. When your family's involved, you're always afraid."
"Too true," Ford said. "My own family—the one I was born into, I mean, you understand—fell apart. Our dad blew up at Stanley and kicked him out of the house. Stan had hurt my feelings, and I callously let him go and didn't stand up for him. Before you knew it, we went our separate ways. And when Stan and I met again—ten years we were apart—it ended catastrophically. I managed it poorly, Stan reacted with justifiable anger, and—well, it was a debacle. Thirty more years passed before we found grounds to make up our quarrel, and by then our parents had died, our older brother had followed them, and—I've let the Pines family down too often, Amy."
"Well, you and they have saved the world now and then," Hazard said. "And your niece and nephew are proud of you. They're lucky to have you in their lives."
"This isn't a romantic overture, is it?" Ford asked with uncertainty in his voice. "I mean—forgive me, I have so little experience with and understanding of situations that—"
"It's not romantic," Hazard assured him. "Just that I feel a little sorry for you. You take so much onto your own shoulders and you're such a private person. Hey, you've built a great team. If you need us, you know you can count on us to come in, fight at your side, and whatever happens, none of us will ever spill secrets to anyone outside. Try to let go of some of this tension."
She kneaded his neck for about half a minute. "Thank you," he said "That does help, that massage. I feel better. And I apologize for thinking that you might be, what is the term, coming on to me?"
Amy Hazard laughed. "It's a term, but seriously, Boss, it's not the kind of thing I'd do with any man. Sorry."
"Oh, I think I understand," Ford said with a nod. "You mean that if it were perhaps Wendy or—"
"Let's not drag our private lives into this," Amy said softly. She sighed. "Ever since I was a teen. These damn crushes spring up, you know? I'm not complaining, I have a, well, satisfactory life of my own, but now and then you see someone, you think if only. But Wendy and Dipper—not a chance of breaking that up. Those two are heart and soul. Like the old piano tune. Chief, this is the only time I'll mention this, but let me lay it out: In my personal life I will always be discreet and I'll control my impulses. You don't have to worry."
"Never about you," Ford said quietly. "Amy, is it just me—or does the moon look funny?"
Hazard gazed up. The moon, past full, had risen about 9:30 and now stood a handbreadth above the cliffs. It was gibbous, lop-sided, waning that it was past full, but that wasn't the odd thing. In fact the moon's color was off. It wasn't like a bright silver coin, but rather a dusky, deep red, like spilled blood beginning to oxidize.
"Smoke in the air?" she asked. Sometimes forest fires or high volcanic ash in the stratosphere could produce a blood moon.
"None in the area, and no recent eruptions that would affect the stratosphere" Ford said. I rather think this is an omen. Whatever is in that thicket, it doesn't belong in this world. Even the Gnomes feel it. Have you ever heard of a gob-hoblin?"
"No," Hazard said. "Hobgoblin, yes, but not the other way around."
"I can't find any references to the term in my usual sources, either. Let's go inside," Ford said. "With that moon glaring down, I have the unpleasant sensation that we're being watched."
Neither of them mentioned the moon or Ford's fears to the others. After all, the Shack was an island of safety in a wilderness of uncertainty. They scraped together a meal and Ford said, "I want you young people to get all the rest you can tonight. Tomorrow in the sun things will seem less oppressive. Is it too much for me to ask you to all sleep in the attic bedroom?"
Wendy and Dipper glanced at each other. "It's fine," Wendy said. Dip and me can squeeze into his bed, and Mabel can take hers. It'll be like old times."
Mabel looked unhappy. "I know why you're asking that," she said. "You want somebody to be near me in case I get like bedazzled by some kind of fairy glamour." Before Ford could deny that, she muttered, "It's happened before. I guess I'm susceptible or something. OK, but if Dip and Wendy want to push the beds together, I'll sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag."
"Or the girls could share the beds and I'll take the sleeping bag," Dipper said.
Hazard asked, "That OK with you, Wendy?"
"Yeah," Wendy said with a shrug. "I've been to sleepovers with Mabes and her girl friends before. We'll do it that way."
"Good," Hazard said. "Dipper, you might put your sleeping bag in front of the door, blocking it, just in case something tries to get in."
"Or out," Mabel said quietly.
"Amy can take the guest room," Ford said. "I'll bring a cot up from my lab and sleep in the center hall. I'm certain that if anything paranormal tries to assault the Shack the unicorn-hair field will wake us. Mason, you take three of the quantum disruptor pistols up to the attic, just in case. Hazard, you have your weapons handy, too. I'll take similar precautions and place a quantum destabilizer beside the cot. If any alert sounds, muster at the foot of the stairs."
"We can take watch and watch," Hazard suggested. "Chief, you can sleep until two, and then I'll wake you and take guard duty."
"That won't be necessary," Ford told her. "But thank you. I have an odd but strong impression that the danger won't really strike until tomorrow, when we go back to the uncanny woods."
"I hope you're right," Amy said.
She was the only one who spoke the hope aloud, but all the others felt it, too.
In the magical realms, things go by similarities and by opposites. This makes no sense, but magic, you know?
In the glare of that bloody moon, the Piper slipped out of the forest and onto the lowest rise of the hill. The pale almond-shaped leaves on all the trees quivered and gazed toward him. The Piper's form changed.
He, she, or whatever it was, could shift shapes but was not a shapeshifter. That is, it was not a plastic, soft, body that could melt and flow into different forms. The Piper was a shape-changer, and that meant the process was excruciating to watch and perhaps to experience.
The creature had seemed formed of forking, twigged branches lashed together into approximately human size and very roughly human shape, assuming the human had been through a round with the Spanish Inquisition and had every joint disjointed, every limb stretched on the rack, and a few extra fingers and toes tossed in for bad measure. You wouldn't expect that, but nobody does.
As its metamorphosis began, the Piper arched and stretched and anyone near might have heard the painful-sounding snapping of bones. Beneath the Piper's bark-like skin something the size of rats seemed to burrow and scurry, making the flesh bulge and surge. Already thin, the Piper's general body form became attenuated, like a dream of a person—a boy, a late teen, probably—painted by El Greco on a bad day. Skull way too elongated, chin sharp and pointed, shoulders broad, reasonable chest veeing down to narrow hips . . . male, definitely, insistently, male parts . . . long-shanked legs tapering to delicate ankles and small bare feet.
The reddish glow of the moon made the colors hard to distinguish, but the skin lost its tree-bark roughness and became smooth but very, very delicately furred, the skin of a ripe peach. And in the moonlight it shone pale, either an off-white or—and this was more likely—a delicate green, the green of a fresh shoot projecting above tilled soil. The Piper's hands lost digits, and it wound up with a thumb and five incredibly long and fragile looking fingers on each hand, each finger with at least five joints. The ears tilted back, enlarged, and grew curved points. Any Vulcan would glance at them and feel inadequate. The backward-swept twigs became a brush of—no doubt about it—soft, flowing lawn-green hair, coming down to a sharp widows' peak just above the place where the two devilish slanted eyebrows almost met. The nose became thin and long and pointed, too, and the mouth turned into an inviting, alluringly wicked curve, the mouth of a Cupid that had, you know, been around.
The eyes, though, remained . . . about the same. Tilted, with eyelids that worked horizontally, green irises, and dark slanting slits as pupils. The transformation felt as if it should have taken half an hour and actually took only seconds. The Piper took a deep breath and stretched arms and legs. Then it lifted the pipes to its lips and, changing its fingering to match its new fingers, began to play a haunting melody. The entranced, exhausted captive humans held captive inside the woods could hear it, but they slept, and in their dreams dark things crept, sinuous as snakes, seeming evil and beautiful and offering them temptations that they, at their ages, had never once imagined even while young and wild.
The Piper began to march, very slowly, and very strangely, around the uncanny woods. A chord, and the long left leg kicked out, the knee bent, the heel arched down to touch the earth, the weight shifted, and then the right leg stepped out. So slow and dreamy.
And this is strange.
When the Piper walked on, his heels left conical indentations in the soil. And when the Piper made the next step, a slip of plant showed in each indentation, and with the next step the shoot was as long as a man's finger and undulating like a cobra facing a snake-charmer. And by the time the Piper had made a complete circuit of the woods base—going counterclockwise, of course—a small, strange gray tree grew there, the murderous thorns already beginning to form.
One and two and three marches round the hill, and the Piper wove a circle thrice, and already the first trees he had summoned were a quarter the height of the oldest trees. Then did the Piper put aside his pipes and he reached to caress the first of the new trees, its trunk just thick enough for him to encircle with his fingers.
And he did stroke the tree and felt it pulse with a kind of lust, and he did smile his work to see.
The moon stood at zenith.
Now the Piper flitted through the night, for he meant to serenade a lady.
He could not come near the house. It had sigils and spells on it, and he could feel its refusing him long before he neared it. But he looked up to the dark triangle of a window high in one wall and knew where his prey slept. He perched on a stump, leaned back, and began to play a slow, pulsating melody.
Inside the attic, Dipper heard nothing. Wendy merely shifted her position a little and grunted. Mabel, on the outside of the improvised double bed, got up before she was awake. "Tripper?" she muttered in a sleep-grumpy mutter. "You want out?"
And then she realized they were not in the house in Crescent City, but the Shack. The music came from outside.
She climbed up onto the table that Dipper always used as a desk and knelt to push the halves of the triangle window open. "Who's there?" she called softly.
And then she saw him in the moonlight, sitting on a stump and leaning backward, pipes at his lips, his body bare and displayed for her. She felt her heart thud hard.
My God, he's beautiful!
Oh, she saw his body, and it was inhuman, even monstrous. And she saw his eyes staring up at her, and they were bizarre, even evil.
But somehow the whole effect of seeing him, of hearing the music—
Mabel moaned.
The moan woke Wendy, who rolled over, dimly saw Mabel kneeling atop the table, and she said, "Dip!"
Dipper jumped up and pulled Mabel backward with an arm around her stomach. "Get down, Sis!"
"But he—he—it, listen, oh, God!" she groaned.
Outside the Piper sprang to his feet. For one brief instant he was a flame of green fire, and then he was gone, vanished, and the music stilled.
Wendy and Dipper had to deal with a shaking, weeping Mabel, who tried to shriek but only croaked hoarsely, and who could only say, for a long while, "Let me go! I have to go to—no, no, I mean hold me! Don't let him get me! I want him, I want him!"
Then when she seemed tensest, Mabel just collapsed. They got her back in bed, Dipper ran and brought Ford up, and Ford could only diagnose Mabel's condition as—
"Sleep," he said. "A very deep sleep. Not a coma. More like she's . . . somehow entranced."
"Can you wake her up?" Dipper asked, hearing panic in his own voice. "We have to do something!"
"I'm not certain Mabel would respond to ordinary stimulants," Ford said. Then he sighed. "I really hate to rely on superstition instead of science, but—let's try a counter-spell."
At her own insistence, Hazard, armed with his quantum destabilizer, rifle version—more powerful by a factor of ten than the disruptors—kept guard downstairs. Down in his lab Ford looked up this and that and the other and returned with a plastic box like a small fishing-lure container. However, he took from it a bay leaf, which he burned in a saucer, and a crystal about two inches long, flattish, partly transparent but with an inner caramel coloring that met in two long triangles touching at the apexes.
"Selenite," he explained brusquely. "I really despise fighting magic with magic." He placed the crystal on Mabel's forehead, then made passes in the air above her body, weaving his hands in intricate patterns. "By the power of the human soul," he intoned, "by the ordinations of the good forces of the universe, I call our Mabel back to waking life!" He changed his voice to that creepy buzzy throat-singing chanty sound and finished with "Daapinimmi daap inimma vuv daap dik, toopanivot hoopanivot, tik, tik, tik! Ja, ja, J'tixuwob Hinn'v!"
"Dudes, she's opening her eyes!" Wendy said.
Blinking, Mabel rose up on her elbows and shook her head. In a thirsty kind of husky voice, she asked, "Huh? Who turned off the music? Grunkle Ford, why does it smell like beef stew in here? And why was I dreaming of a beautiful naked green guy and caramel? Speaking of which, is there any caramel in the vending machine downstairs?"
Dipper gave her a sibling hug. "Welcome back, Sis!"
What Fools these Morsels Be!
(Fall 2018)
6-Trees and Forests
"I'm OK," Mabel insisted. "It was—I guess it wasn't—but it was like a bad dream." She frowned. "I saw something. I—it's hard to describe."
"Don't worry about it now," Dipper said. "We can talk in the morning—"
"I'll forget it by then! Dipper, look on the closet shelf for some drawing supplies! I can't describe this thing, but I think I can sketch it!"
"Only if you don't think it will disturb you," Ford said.
Mabel glared at him. "I'm already disturbed, Grunkle Ford! I gotta do this now before it all fades. It already seems like a dream."
Dipper scrounged up an old nine-by-twelve-inch Scratchmor sketch pad—the pages dense with pencil and charcoal doodles of Waddles, Waddle doodles, you might say, with the pig in a variety of poses and outfits, plus designs that Mabel had later knitted into sweaters. She had almost filled the pad back in 2012. However, three blank sheets of the heavy, medium-toothed paper remained at the end.
Wendy brought her a wood cutting board from the kitchen to use as an easel, pausing only to explain to Amy Hazard, on guard in the hallway, what was going on. Ford went down to his lab and came back with a Mystery Shack mug crammed with different grades of sharpened drawing pencils, ranging from 4B to 4H. Mabel selected the HB for the outlines and the 4B, a softer grade, for shading.
Mabel sat up in bed, two pillows stuffed behind her. Dipper, at her request, turned on the lantern and placed it so its light shone on her pad. For a few seconds, Mabel stared hard at the blank white sketching paper, her tongue showing in the corner of her mouth, as she poised to begin.
Then, with a soft eraser ready on the table beside the bed, she frowned down at the pad, held the HB pencil between thumb and forefinger in a painterly grip, and rapidly put down some general curving lines for the figure. "He was sitting on that big stump just past the parking lot," she said.
"White oak," Wendy put in helpfully. "I think my Dad took it down for Stan after it got hit by lightning one year."
Mabel didn't pause in her drawing. "Well, this thing was sitting on it, sprawled back. I'm doing the head first. It was playing one of those whatchacallems, a Pan flute, I think. Real strange music, just random notes, sounded like. OK, now, the hair went like this—"
Dipper shivered a little. The facial expression emerging on the pad was aloof, cold, amused, and alien. The eyebrows, angled eyes, and over-large, pointed ears at first reminded him of a cartoon Peter Pan, but then the sharp, hooked nose and the sensuous mouth, pursed as the creature blew into the pipes, gave more of a demonic impression.
"Ugh," Wendy said. "Those eyes!"
"A bit like Bill Cipher's eye," Ford said.
The hair swept up and backward. "It looks stiff in the drawing," Mabel said, but it moved as it turned its head. Real loose, probably fine-textured. And I think everything, skin and hair and all, was in shades of green."
"Interesting," observed Ford.
Mabel erased a few guide lines, examined the face, and made a few tweaks with a softer pencil. "OK, I'm gonna do the figure."
She drew the arms and torso, oddly muscled, not quite human. The hands with grotesquely long fingers held the pipes up to the thing's lips. The legs seemed to bend backward at the knees. "Sure of that?" asked Ford.
"Uh-huh. Not shaggy, though and the feet were these small feet with toes and pointed nails, not hooves. Legs bare, I think hairless? I could see the moon reflected on the skin. It wasn't a—what are those half-goat things, Dip?"
"Satyrs," Dipper said.
"Yeah, that. The legs looked human, except for the way the knees bent and the teeny-tiny feet. OK, like that." Mabel took a deep breath. "And I got to add this part."
She sketched in the figure's privates.
Wendy drew in a deep breath. "Mabes! That's like a Rule 34 cartoon!"
"I saw what I saw," Mabel insisted. "It really was this big in scale with the body."
Ford adjusted his glasses. "My word! And he was, ah, in a state of arousal like that?"
"Yep. I know it's big, but that's the way it looked."
Blushing at the image, Ford suddenly said, "Puck!"
Mabel gave him a side-eye. "I'd expect that from Grunkle Stan, not from you!" she scolded. "And anyway, it's pronounced 'Fu—'"
"No!" Ford said hastily. "I mean it's like Puck, you know, from the Shakespeare play!"
"A Midsummer Night's Dream," Dipper supplied. "Uh, when he first comes on, another fairy recognizes him and says—" he frowned in concentration. "Says, 'Some Hobgoblin call you or sweet Puck!' That's not quite it but—"
"Hobgoblin," said Ford. "Or as the Gnomes had it—"
"Gob-hoblin!" Wendy exclaimed. "We may be onto something!"
"Robin Goodfellow was his other name," Dipper said.
Mabel snorted. "I think a batter name would be Bobbin' Longfellow, 'cause—"
"You don't have to explain it," her brother said.
"Not a satyr, no, but the green coloring, the odd trees . . . I think we may be dealing with a woodwose," Ford said.
"A woodlouse?" Wendy asked.
"Wose," Ford emphasized.
Dipper said, "I think I've read about them somewhere. Wild men of the forest, right? Like, uh, like the Green Knight in the poem. Aren't they a sort of satyrs?"
"Not precisely. In European legend, woodwoses are something like them," Ford said. "But I don't believe they're normally harmful to humans in the stories. Come to that, even Puck is said to have happily helped farmers bring in their crops and such, though he's also tricky and untrustworthy."
Mabel was shading in the drawing. "Damn," she said, squirming. "What time is it? I need to call Teek."
"It's way past midnight," Dipper said. "In Georgia, it'll be closing in on four in the morning."
"Well—yeah, I always forget the time difference—I don't think I'm gonna sleep any more tonight, so I'll plan to face-time him at five. That's eight Georgia time, right?"
"Right."
"Maybe four-thirty, then. I think his first class starts at nine, but just in case. I know he wakes up around seven."
"What are you gonna tell him?" Wendy asked.
Mabel looked so serious that her expression verged on the tragic. "That I love him. And no woodlouse is gonna drag me away from him, even if he has a huge instrument!"
"Yes," Ford said. "The Pan flute looks larger than the normal ones."
The Piper moved silently through the forest, passing without a rustle through ferns shriveled already from the first frosts, through tangles of wild blackberry vines—the thorns did not snag its skin, and it moved through them more like a wisp of mist than a solid body.
The moon, a few days past full, shone down, casting dim fluttering patches of light on the forest floor. When the Piper moved from under the trees into some clearing or other, the moonlight silvered his body.
The turning of the moon always brought him increased power and awareness. Soon, on the night of Samhain, the moon would show as third-quarter, and a week or so beyond that came the dark of the moon. The Piper would have to rest then, until more time past and the moon became first-quarter and waxed to the full of the late-fall Beaver Moon, as the old people had called it.
The Piper needed more servants before then.
One for piping,
Two for mates,
Three for feeding,
Four for shapes.
Five for power,
Six for gain,
Seven to seal them
With darkest stain.
That was the how of it and the when of it and no one knew the why of it, not even the Piper. Between Hunter's Moon and the turning to dark, if it entranced seven humans, then it had powers that it could not otherwise possess.
Powers to seduce and discard.
Powers to maze minds and ensorcell souls, to make good evil and evil good, to joy in the chaos of humans bereft of reason.
The Piper did not think of itself as wicked. It merely followed its way, as did the stinging scorpion and the striking snake. One must eat to live. It dined on human rapaciousness and sensual indulgence. It did not eat flesh, but spirit.
The human girl should have come out. He knew she had seen him in obscene display, had heard his music, had tasted desire. Yet she resisted.
The dwelling, the dwelling enchanted and enfolded by magic, must have protected her.
But the Piper knew she would leave it, come back to the hill topped with his forest. And as the human dwelling kept the wild things of the spectral world out, so did his forest welcome them, corrupt the innocent, change the mind, and bind the spirits that entered within it. Keep them there through a full cycle of the moon, full to full, and they . . . changed. They became the same kind as the Piper, and they would go forth in turn to haunt and hunt others, to grow tangled forests of their own.
The Piper had two goals: To trap three more humans and fill the number to the magic seven. And to hold them, mindless, animals without a link to soul, until the next full moon came and beyond it the next, and then the dark magic would be complete.
Approaching the uncanny forest, the prison of four, the Piper began to play again, a soothing sound to keep the four asleep.
The day to come . . . the Piper sensed that the girl would return.
And the Piper would be waiting.
Despite her decision not to sleep, Mabel did fall asleep again. Wendy made sure the window was not only closed, but locked, and this time Mabel slept in the inside, near the wall, while Wendy took the outside part of the beds, so if Mabel stirred she would wake up.
Dipper moved the sleeping bag to the floor at the foot of the bed. Either he or Wendy would know if Mabel tried to get up again during the night.
Downstairs Ford sat at the table with Amy Hazard. Hazard looked at the sketch. "It's like something out of Bosch," she said.
"Or nightmare," Ford agreed. He said, "I'm going to try to sleep for about—" he glanced at his watch—"for about four hours. Then at five I'll call Fiddleford. He's working on something that might conceivably help us, if it's in a state to be tested. I'll ask him to drive over and I'll guard the porch until he can get safely inside. His invention may not be ready, but he might have some other suggestions." He smiled wearily. "Fiddleford's rural upbringing means that he sometimes knows more about superstitions and legends than I. For me, it's all information from books. Fiddleford grew up on a Southern farm, where people believed in haunts and what he calls boogers, in witches and in tokens of good luck and bad fortune."
"I know he's an ace inventor," Hazard said. "Go on, Chief, get some rest. I'm wide awake. Will you need me tomorrow early?"
"Not before noon," Ford said. "I think . . . it may be wise to return to the forest on the hill when the sun is close to zenith. Just a feeling."
'Then when you get up and Dr. McGucket has made his visit, I'll turn in for four hours."
"Will that be enough for you?"
She patted his hand. "If it's enough for you, why worry about me?"
"Well," Ford said, "I spent some time in other dimensions. I developed the knack of making four hours of sleep count. I wonder . . . there's something I'm missing. Am I looking at the trees or at the forest? Something I'm just not grasping yet. " He shook his head. "But I'll be fine with four hours of rest. I don't want to over-tax you, though."
"Don't worry, I'm good," Amy said. "Go on, turn in. You look about ready to drop."
"Thank you. We may need the helicopter tomorrow."
"It's gassed and ready to go."
On the way out, Ford paused in the doorway. "I must ask you: Did you hear any strange music around midnight?"
"No."
"Nor I." He frowned. "I have to work out why. It may be we're too old—but then Mason and Wendy didn't hear it, either—or maybe we're just too used to strangeness. Well. Anyway, I'll relieve you in the morning."
"I'll stay alert," she said. She patted the quantum destabilizer. "And locked and loaded."
What Fools these Morsels Be!
(Fall 2018)
7-Up in the Air
Despite her good intentions, Mabel was still asleep at 4:30 the next morning. Dipper was awake, though, and at 4:45 he woke her. She took her cell phone downstairs and asked Grunkle Ford for privacy. He took her down to his lab, told her not to touch anything, but then had her sit in a chair. She pointed out that she had to touch that, and he explained she was not to touch any buttons, levers, slide controls, or anything that sparked, hummed, or looked remotely like a weapon.
When she agreed, he went upstairs, and Mabel placed her face-time call, catching Teek just getting dressed. He already had his jeans on, but not yet his shirt, and she grinned and said, "Take your time."
She explained why she was calling, he expressed his long-distance support, and they chatted about how much they were both looking forward to winter break, when Teek would fly home from Atlanta and Mabel promised to meet him at the airport and drive him to Gravity Falls. And they spoke quietly of other things, and by the time the call ended Mabel felt strong enough to resist even glancing at the weird green guy, even if he was bare-butt naked and, um, wagging at her.
By the time she came upstairs, Wendy and Dipper had prepared pancakes, turkey bacon, and scrambled eggs, along with coffee. Ford normally ate only an orange for breakfast—he had missed citrus whilst in the myriad alternate realities that make up the Multiverse—but Soos and Melody didn't have any, so he made do with a couple of pancakes and a small helping of eggs, plus a king-sized mug of coffee.
The doorbell rang at six A.M. and made everyone jump. Ford grabbed a quantum disruptor pistol and threw the door open, as once, armed with a crossbow, he had opened it for his brother Stanley. The caller turned out to be Fiddleford, who took it in stride. Heck, he had a roboticized Queen Anne armchair, which he had named Chair Man Miaow, that responded to doorbells with a bristle of gunnery and a flat, imperative "State your business, punk."
Unless Chair Man recognized the caller, in which case the voice, more human, welcomed visitors.
Anyway, Fiddleford didn't seem to notice the weapon in Ford's hand. He held up a bowling-ball bag and said, "Howdy! I put in some hours at th' workbench, an' this here's the best I can do on short notice, I reckon. Iffen it works right, I'll patent it and you can add it to your arsenal." He sniffed. "I ain't et yet. Whatever that is sure smells dee-licious."
He sat at the table and shoveled in food—Fiddleford often skipped meals because he forgot about them, and he made up for that when he could—while Ford opened the bag and took out something that looked like a sawed-off shotgun and a Japanese pagoda had given birth to a child. "Ain't nothin' to it," Fiddleford said, dabbing his lips with a napkin. "Jest only point an' pull the trigger an' it's good night, Sally! 'Course this ain't meant to be lethal, so any killins're gonna be jest misfortunate side-a-maffects."
"What's the range?" Ford asked.
"I tested 'er at a hundred meters. When I hit the target, she teleported 'bout ten meters, give or take."
"This thing has a body," Ford said. "It's not an apparition, it's flesh and blood. Of a kind, anyway. And it's alive. So if we use your device on it, it should be instantly teleported ten meters, but not be injured?"
"Now, that I can't absotively guarantee," Fiddleford said, shaking his head and reaching for another pancake. "From what you said, it's from some other dimension. I know it didn't faze the lab rat. Confoozled it a mite, but it was fitter'n a bull fiddle last I checked. But alien flesh an' blood, or the equivalent thereof—" he shook his head. "Dunno what it might do to them. Might oughta wear raincoats in case there's a boom an' a splatter. You want me to go with y'all?"
"No, old friend," Ford said. "I hope it won't come to the more physical means of persuasion, but should it do so, I'd prefer to know that you're safe."
Fiddleford polished off the last of his pancake, burped in an apologetic way, and said, "Thankee kindly, that hit the spot an' knocked it fer a loopy-loop. You said you had some, now, pictures fer me to look at?"
They spread out the aerial photos that Hazard had shot, along with Mabel's drawing. Fiddleford, oddly, was most interested in the trees. He squinted at them through a magnifying glass. "These ain't no Earthly plants," he said.
"Yeah, tell us about it," Wendy said. "They're more like . . . like gray cactuses with mutated spines. But they have roots—you can see 'em in a couple of the pictures—and they seem to be woody, though I can't be sure about that. But what's weird is that the grove grows in a spiral, see? And it widens out as it goes down the hill, but at the top there's just this narrow circular opening."
"It looks more like a cage than a natural grove," Dipper said.
"Yep," said Fiddleford. "I reckon these was planted deliberate-like. An' that suggests to my mind that this feller don't want anybody gettin' inside the grove there."
"Amy thinks the missing campers may be held prisoner in the central opening," Ford said.
Fiddleford used his magnifying glass again. "Uh-huh. These here nubbly tree tops grow awful close together. How wide is this space at the top, do you reckon? I make it only about three meters."
"About that," Ford agreed. "Say ten feet diameter. From the way the trunks bend, I'd say the open space on the hilltop may be about twice that size."
"Can you go in from th' top?"
"We won't try to send a person in," Ford said. "Not until we've attempted to deal with this—this creature, this Piper. If all else fails—well, I can call on Powers to organize a strike team. We'll see."
Fiddleford looked at Mabel's sketch and shook his head. "Evil-lookin' customer. Best I can wish you all is—good luck."
Hazard was up by eight-fifteen, having grabbed not quite four full hours of sleep. Wendy brewed more coffee and prepared some stone-cut oats—they took longer to boil but tasted better than the instant kind—and livened them up with some pecans and raisins. When that was ready, she toasted a couple of slices of sourdough bread and served breakfast. "You seem alert for somebody who barely slept," Wendy said as she sat at the table with her second cup of coffee and Amy sprinkled a spoonful of brown sugar over the cereal.
"You kind of develop the knack," Amy said. "At least in my line of work. Mm, good coffee!"
"Yeah, Soos imports it from Portland," Wendy said with a grin. "Man, I had at least one more hour of sleep than you, and I feel dragged out. You have to give me some tips for the all-nighters Dip and I pull before a big exam."
"Oatmeal's good, too. I never really got the knack of cooking. If I can give you tips on how to get by on a few hours' sleep, you can tell me how to boil water."
"Deal," Wendy said.
Amy finished the bowl of oatmeal and the toast, which impressed her—"Not used to being aware of the taste of bread!" she said. The guys were all down in the lab at that point, and Mabel had sacked out in the attic to get a few more winks of sleep. "Hey," Amy said after her last slip of coffee, "Wendy, I didn't mean to come on to you. Just sort of—you know, testing the water."
Wendy returned her smile. "Yeah, I kinda got that. And at one time, I dunno, something might've clicked. But Dipper and I—what can I say? We're happy together, and I don't want to jeopardize that. But at one time, yeah. Anyway, I'm flattered."
Amy got up and took her dishes to the sink. Over her shoulder, she said, "As a pilot, I'm instrument rated. Can fly without much, if any, visual reference to the sky and terrain, you know. But I have learned that sometimes radar can be misleading. Sorry for the mistake."
"No need to be," Wendy said. "Like I said, another place, another time, maybe a different story. No offense taken, none intended."
"Tell Dipper from me that he's one lucky guy."
"I'm a lucky woman," Wendy said. More softly, she added, "I hope you find your own luck, Amy. You've got a hell of a lot going for you."
That small awkwardness over, they joined the men in doping out a strategy. Ford studied the aerial photos of the strange forest and said, "If only we had a clear view of the interior. If only we knew that the missing persons were inside this strange prison."
"I could give it a flyover, Chief," Amy said.
"I'd rather not risk it, Hazard," Ford told her. "This being may have powers we don't understand. It could interfere with your craft, or perhaps with your mind, giving you false perceptions and causing catastrophic results."
"Drone," Fiddleford said.
Dipper slapped the table. "Great idea! Great-Uncle Ford, a drone could descend right into the open space, sending back a video and audio feed. Do we have—"
"Do we have a drone?" Fiddleford asked with a cackle. "Dipper, I got a mess of 'em! Big 'uns, little 'uns, and all in-between! I think this here, now, openin' would call for my Model .5 M. Jest exactly half a meter corner to corner, quad, with a strong signal generatormajig and a plumb advanced resolution and audio detection into th' infra- and ultrasonic ranges. Ford, iffen Miz Hazard could orbitify the area at an altitude of, say, a thousand feet with a signal relayer, I reckon you could stay at a safe distance an' still get your peepers on what's in the middle of them trees." He blinked. "Uh, am I makin' sense? I fergot to bring my pills with me."
He was making perfect sense. It took him less than half an hour to go back to his home and return with the elegant quad-copter drone. They took it outside and McGucket taught him how to maneuver it—"She's got low-level AI autopilot built in, so y'can't hardly bust her up. Jest nudge th' joystick and she'll pretty much go where you tell her an' look at what you want to see."
"Then reconnaissance is our first step," Ford said. He put his hand on Fiddleford's shoulder. "Thank you, old friend. You don't know, and I have no words to tell you, how much you've helped. Go home now, and I'll phone as soon as we have news. Oh, by the way, when you went back for the drone, did you remember to take your pills?"
Fiddleford gawped at him "Stanford, nobody can swaller a live possum, an' they ain't purple nohow." Then when Ford looked shocked, McGucket hooted a laugh and hamboned his amusement. "I took 'em both," he said. "Jest pullin' your leg!" before he left, he shook Dipper's and Ford's hands. And he said very seriously, "You all—you take good care, now, y'hear?"
Wendy got Mabel up just before eleven, she had a quick breakfast, and then Wendy, Mabel, Ford, and Dipper set out in the Jeep, while Amy Hazard started through the checklist for the chopper.
"Whatcha chomping on, Mabel?" Wendy asked as they pulled out of the drive.
"Big wad of bubblegum," Mabel said. "And I didn't bring enough for everybody! There's a reason for this." She blew a bubble a little larger than her head. When it popped, she pulled it back into her mouth and chewed harder before repeating, "There's a reason for this. Show you later."
They stopped the Jeep as close to the hill as they could get, and then as the sun climbed toward the zenith, they set out on foot. When they came to within sight of the hill, they stopped and Ford said, "My word! Am I mistaken, or is the woods greater in extent now?"
"You're not seeing things," Wendy said. "This has to be some crazy dimensional thing. No normal tree could grow that fast."
Dipper said, "Guys, I don't like this. Do you feel this—this waiting sensation? Like we're being watched?"
"Thought it was just me," Wendy said.
"There's an aura of menace here," Ford muttered. "Let's get the drone ready. Wendy, here's the radio. The eagle will be on 119.4 megaHertz. See if she's in touch with—oh, her handle is Eagle One. We're Ground One."
"We're ground-walkers," Wendy said, taking the handset. "OK, tuning . . . one one niner point four, check?"
"Check," Ford said. He blinked. "Where did you pick up your jargon?"
"Sprawl-Mart," Wendy said with a grin. "You can find everything there, dude. OK, got the frequency set. Here we go. Eagle One, this is Ground One. Ground One calling Eagle One, over."
The radio had a remarkably clear tone: "Ground One, this is Eagle One. You're coming in loud and clear. How's my signal, over."
"Eagle One, you're loud and clear. We're at the site, over."
"Roger that, Ground One, I'm on my way. ETA is three minutes from . . . mark. Over."
"Roger three minute ETA, Eagle One. We're watching and listening for you. Ground One over and out."
"That's my wife," Dipper said with an absurdly wide grin.
"Mason, let's you and I launch the drone. You take the controls."
"Wait," Mabel said. "We gotta name the drone! I mean Ground One, Eagle One, gotta name the drone!"
"Hmm," Ford said. "What do you suggest, Mabel?"
Her jaw moving as she chewed her gum, she said, "Can't be Eaglet, can it, because that's too similar to Eagle. How about Hummingbird?"
Holding up the quad copter, Ford said, "I christen thee Hummingbird! It's all set, Mason. Take it up."
"Roger that," Dipper said. He made the drone lift off, let it hover fifty feet overhead until Ford checked the AV reception—on the display Dipper could see the four of them in a little group just past the edge of the normal forest—and then, moving the device carefully, Dipper flew it to that other woods, the uncanny one, and they saw the opening that was their target. "Should I go in or wait for—"
"There she is," Ford said, tilting his head. In another moment they all heard the thrum of the chopper blades, and then the sleek helicopter appeared far above the trees.
The radio crackled: "Ground One, this is Eagle One. I have eyes on you. Ready to begin at your command, over."
Ford said, "Dipper, start the drone in, keep the speed low, hover only a few feet down into the opening. Wendy, tell Amy to acquire the drone signal and relay it to my receiver here. I'll take care of recording everything. Mabel, you can—uh."
"I'll chew my gum, Grunkle Ford," Mabel said.
And they all began to do their jobs.
What Fools these Morsels Be!
(Fall 2018)
8-Neither Here nor There
"Eagle One to Ground One. I have the drone signal, coming in good. Over."
"Ground One to Eagle One," said Wendy. "The drone's call sign is HMB. Repeat, Hotel Mike Bravo. Over."
"Check, Ground One: Hotel Mike Bravo. Over."
"Roger that, Eagle One. HMB is going in . . . mark. Over."
Beside Wendy, Dipper kept his eyes glued to the small display screen on the joystick. Ford had a larger one and was recording the whole video. As the helicopter circled a thousand feet up, Dipper took the drone all around the hill, then moved it directly over the center of the copse of, well, call them trees, at an altitude of about fifty feet above treetop level.
"I'm glad we didn't have to lower somebody in," Dipper said to Mabel, who didn't reply. "Looks spooky."
The way the treetops leaned and bent inward, the opening really looked like an old-fashioned camera iris, ready to close with a snap. "Grunkle Ford," Dipper said tensely, "I'm switching on the light . . . now. And down we go."
"Fine, fine," muttered Ford in his abstracted way. The screen on the joystick base went black, but then showed a picture as the lens adjusted to the diminished light. Below the ground looked clear—not bare, but grassy and without visible stones. A slightly oval patch of noon sun shone bright, limiting what he could see outside the shaft of sunlight.
"I'm gonna see if I can get close to the trees," Dipper said when the drone was about ten feet above the dome of the hill. "Here we go, slow, slow—wait, what's that?"
At the same instant, Ford asked urgently, "Is that a body? Back it up, back it up!"
Dipper hovered the drone. "It's a person," he said. "Looks like a guy."
It was hard to tell. Whoever it was sprawled on his face. The body was dark-complexioned and very still. And naked. Dipper could see the legs and the buttocks and the ribcage . . . "He's breathing!" Ford said. "He's alive!"
But not responding to the whirr or the light from the drone. The trees grew so thickly that they cut off almost all the light from the sky, but a little further on Dipper found another body, female, as dark as the first, and then a pale one with either blonde or gray hair, and then the fourth, another male. None seemed conscious, and Dipper felt like a voyeur as the camera revealed their nudity.
"Eagle One to Ground one, you guys seeing this?"
"Roger that, Eagle One," Wendy said. "They all seem to be unconscious. Over."
Ford leaned toward his display screen. When he spoke, his voice sounded taut: "Mason, very slowly maneuver the drone to the . . . to the left a few inches at a time. What are we seeing there?"
Dipper nudged the joystick, barely tapping it. The drone moved slowly away from the last sleeping figure, toward the patch of noon sun.
"There!" Ford said. "Stop it. Now move it toward six o'clock."
"What is that?" Dipper asked. He squinted at what looked like a faintly glowing orange splotch.
"Don't descend, but zoom the lens in and let it autofocus. Five-X magnification, please."
"Eagle One to Ground One, is that a fire? A campfire?" asked Hazard
"Ground One to Eagle, don't know," Wendy said. "It looks like a fire, but—it's X-shaped. Over."
Felling sick in the pit of his stomach, Dipper said, "It's a rift, isn't it? Like the time Bill tore the sky open. Only—"
"Only now it looks like a peek into hell," Ford said. "I wish we had a thermocouple aboard!"
"Guys," Mabel said, "I think old Pipey is onto us. Is that him?"
"Where?" Wendy asked, but Mabel was pointing. Squinting, Wendy wasn't sure she saw anything, but then she was sure. It was . . . like the tales her dad told of the Hide-Behind. "One minute it ain't there, an' the next you see it just from the corner of your eye, and you look straight at it, and it's gone!"
The elongated, bony figure that had stepped from the trees—how could anything fit in the inches between the weird tree trunks?—exactly matched them in its gray-green color. From where she stood, Wendy couldn't make out any facial features, and only when it raised the pipe to its lips was she sure that the out-of-focus moving stick-figure thing was the Piper.
Mabel started to walk toward it.
"Stop!" Dipper yelled.
"Mason, get the drone out of there!"
"Eagle One to Ground One, what's happening, over!"
Wendy didn't answer. She had dropped the handset and was running toward Mabel, who was running toward—
Toward God knew what.
While standing his turn as guard, Ford had done some research, partly on the Internet but mostly by riffling through the pages of books he had read—in some cases forty years earlier—for things he vaguely recalled. He'd taken the time to dictate his thoughts into a very compact voice recorder, a gift from Lorena "for those times when you can't write but want to record some thoughts."
Transcript:
I still don't know what the being we have provisionally named the Piper truly is. "Woodwose" doesn't quite fit it. Woodwoses were wild men of the forest, with bark-like skin, green hair, and green skin, true, but scholars think they were personifications of the generative powers of spring. They symbolized how the forest and the land renews itself after the cold pseudo-death of winter.
And despite the superficial resemblances to the figure of Pan—goat-legged, player of pipes, and so on—this creature seems much more malign. Satyrs were sexually rapacious, and they took what they wanted by force, but they were moved more by instinct and desires than by thought. I sense that this Piper has an evil intelligence.
Something kept tickling the edges of my perceptions, until I finally recalled the two Medieval accounts of Ralph of Coggeshall and William of Newburgh. The two left separate and slightly variant versions of the remarkable story, yet each writer consulted witnesses who affirmed the truth of the account, and the fundamental elements are the same in both accounts.
Ralph of Coggeshall was an abbot who resigned his position as his health declined and who undertook to write a history, the Chronicon Anglicanum (or Chronicle of England). Ralph tells us his knowledge of the story came from Sir Richard de Calne, who was intimately familiar with the details. Ralph wrote the story in 1189. In turn, William of Newburgh included the tale, which he claims came to him from elderly but reliable first-hand witnesses, in about the same year, writing in his Historia rerum Anglicanum (History of English Events).
Both tell of a strange event that occurred about the year 1150 AD near the town of Woolpit, a village in Suffolk near Bury St. Edmonds and Stowmarket. One morning an official charged with patrolling the wolf-pits (traps dug to capture the wolves that at that time preyed on farm animals, and which probably gave Wool[f]pit its name) discovered two small children near one of the pits.
They were green.
They were taken into the village and examined by the priest and others. The children did not understand English, and spoke a strange buzzing language that no one could even recognize. They were a boy and a girl, the boy about ten and the girl a little younger, seven or eight. Their clothing looked alien to the villagers, and their skin and hair were vivid shades of green. They were evidently starving, but they did not seem to recognize any foods offered them, except when someone brought in beanstalks heavy with beans—but then the youngsters tried to eat the stems and had to be shown how to open the pods and find the beans, which they devoured raw and with a great appetite. Eventually a local knight, Sir Richard de Calne, came to see this wonder and adopted the two children.
Alas, the boy sickened and died before long, but the girl survived to adulthood and learned English. She told her remarkable story to Sir Richard, who in turn told it in later years to the author Ralph of Coggeshall.
She said she and her brother came from a land where the sun neither rose nor set. They had never seen the sun, because their own country existed in a perpetual twilight. The people there, she said, were not like her or any human being, but were somehow different in ways she could not express. One day she and her brother had heard a beautiful sound coming from a cave. They followed the music (which later she identified as church bells) into the cave but lost their way. Growing hungry and thirsty, they finally crept upwards through a long passage and climbed out of a narrow opening onto the surface some distance from where they were found.
Utterly terrified by such ordinary things as trees and the sky, they stumbled along until the man found them. The girl later told Sir Richard that her country was called St. Martin's Land, as nearly as she could recall. Gradually her green color faded away, and by the time she was an adult, she looked like a normal, though unusually pale, young woman. She hated going out in the sun and said it blinded her. Disturbingly, she said the people in the land where she came from were "like the sheep and pigs," that is, domestic animals. Their shepherds were the Wild Ones, who would raise and butcher them as humans do farm animals.
No one ever found the cave from which they had come, though it must have opened somewhere in the forest within a few miles of Woolpit.
It may only be legend. Still—the Piper. The Shepherd.
I must confess that I begin to fear for the survival of those lost campers.
Dipper thrust the controls into Ford's hands. "Stop her!" he yelled to Wendy, and to Mabel, "Stop! Turn back! Mabel, come back now!"
Wendy and Mabel both had a head start. Wendy had pulled her axe from the scabbard and carried it with a grip fastened just below the head. Mabel paid no attention to her shouts, but ran toward the Piper, who played—
Or did he? Wendy heard no notes, no music, and yet the Piper moved the pipes as if blowing into them—
-some tune that, Wendy thought, only Mabel could hear. She was aware of Dipper running hard behind her, and he was the faster of the two now, an expert sprinter, but she had started to run only an instant after Mabel had, and she had wasted a few steps drawing her axe, and now it looked as though she wouldn't be able to get there in time—
"Leave her alone!" Wendy shouted to the Piper. "If you hurt her, I swear to God I'll chop you into little pieces!"
"Let me get a clear shot!" Dipper yelled.
Oh, right, he had the disruptor pistol.
"Can't, you might hit Mabel!"
The chopper's blades thrummed loud, and Eagle One buzzed them, tilted, and threatened the Piper.
He hardly paused, but momentarily freed one hand—the left—and made a contemptuous upward sweeping gesture—
The helicopter's engine screamed as it went spinning end-for-end up above the tree line, Hazard no doubt fighting the controls to straighten it out.
"Get down, Mabel!" Dipper yelled. "I'm gonna shoot!"
"Mason! No!" Ford shouted from behind.
Mabel got there first, her fists balled and her voice rising to a screech: "Go to hell, you demon jerk!"
The creature reached for her—
Wendy drew back her axe—
Dipper stumbled over a root and went sprawling—
And when he pushed himself up, the Piper was dancing, twirling, away, desperately avoiding Wendy's blade, and Mabel—
Mabel was gone!
What Fools these Morsels Be!
(Fall 2018)
9-Dark and Deep
Chaos.
The Piper looked around wildly, weird eyes glaring, as though he were just as astonished by Mabel's disappearance as Dipper and the rest. Wendy, screaming—not a word, just a tearing, furious cry of fury—closed in and swung. The Piper tried to raise its pipes to its lips, but Wendy's axe in its gleaming arc sliced through the thing's arm halfway between elbow and wrist, and the clutching hand and the pipes fell to earth, where the forearm and hand shriveled.
It was impossible to tell whether the blow hurt the creature or whether it was simply in full-on rage, but it howled. Wendy had the chance for a good whack at the torso, but instead she took half a step back and chopped the pipes. They shattered not like wood but like pottery, pieces exploding, and the head of her axe briefly turned cherry-red. Her next smoking roundhouse blow barely missed the Piper as it pirouetted away, the mangled left arm already sending out a green shoot as if healing. Dipper yelled, "Wen! Jump left!"
His shot with the disruptor pistol sizzled through the spot where, an instant before, the creature had been, but it moved in a blur and instead the ray cut a foot-wide chunk out of two trees at the edge of the grove. The damaged trunks thrashed like tentacles, and Wendy had to hit the ground and roll as one crashed down. She was up again in an instant.
The Piper hissed like a big cat, leaped toward the trees, remaining arm extended, and—
Turned to oily green smoke. It flowed up the bent trunks, around the spiky thorns, and—
Hazard's voice crackled over the radio handset: "Eagle One to Ground One! Eagle One to Ground One! Ten-Two! Repeat Ten-"
"This is Ground One!" Ford said as he thumbed the transmit button. "Amy, are you all right?"
"Roger that, Chief, OK, OK. I'm coming over now. I saw the thing burst into smoke—it's pouring through the opening at the top of the trees now! Orders? Over?"
"Fly over and keep it under observation!" Ford said, forgetting all radio protocol. "Mabel is Code 141, repeat Code 141! Do you have eyes on her?" After a second, he remembered to say "Over!"
"Ground One, negative, negative. Coming in on a tight curve, intend to hover above the woods! Over!"
By then the throaty roar of the helicopter shook the ground. It appeared only fifty feet or so above the whipping branches of forest canopy, and its rotor wash blew Dipper's hat off and billowed Wendy's fiery hair. The chopper hung right over the woods and they could see Hazard leaning and looking down.
"Ground One, dark inside! Permission to light it up? Over!"
Ford hesitated. Hazard didn't mean to bomb the forest—but even if she simply shone a strong light inside—how much of a risk was she taking? They'd already lost Mabel, or at least misplaced her—a Code 141 was "missing child," and Mabel certainly would object to being called a child, but it was the closest thing they had to the situation. What if—he had to decide.
"Affirmative, Eagle One," Ford said, his voice tight. "Light it up."
Meanwhile a furious Wendy was chopping at the nearest trunk of the alien trees. It shuddered with each bite of the axe.
London, a morning in 1595:
On stage Ben, the youngest player in Lord Hunsdon's Men, dressed—if you could call it that—in rags of forest green that fluttered around his bare limbs and threatened to reveal more than they should, gestured antically and in an eerie piping voice rehearsed his lines:
"I'll follow you, I'll lead you about a round,
Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier:
Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn."
"Stop there!" Will, who was playing the part of Peter Quince and also doubling as critic and advisor, squinted. He stood where the groundlings would and had their view of what was going on—or coming off—on stage.
Perhaps the wardrobe might supply the young scamp with some tight, brief, leathern shorts. It would be a shame if the Master of the Revels should fine the company, or, God forbid, interdict the play entirely and refuse them license to perform. Bawdy talk short of blasphemy or lese-majesty Will could almost always get away with—"Cupid's fiery shaft quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon" was merely a polite way of saying the god of love's, um, love-shaft plunged straight into the lady-parts of moon-goddess Diana, and moreover it was a metaphor, and anyway three-quarters of his audience didn't have any idea of what was really being said.
So too when Pyramus asked Thisbe to kiss him through the hole in the wall, and Thisbe made an ill face and complained, "I kiss the Wall's hole, not thy lips at all" as she wiped her lips, everybody knew exactly what was meant, but that was all right because the whole audience roared in laughter. Laughter excused a lot of bawdiness!
At the moment the actors were skirting the dangerous edge of outright lewdness with A Midsummer Night's Dream—a tale of four young people, two male, two female (all male really because you had to use boys for the ladies' roles, there being a law against women on stage)—four young people right at that rump-tumbling age, lost in the woods on a warm summer night, and a love potion about to confuse things—
They had to be careful.
Will sighed. "Let us begin again," he said. "And Ben—"
"Puck!" Ben said, twirling and then striking a pose with mock sternness. "Puck, I pray thee, gentle master!"
Method actors, Will thought. Ha! In his 'prentice days, you had to be ready to spring on stage, say your piece at a good pace, leap off, swift as lightning doff your costume and don another, and then re-enter as a different person and use a different voice and nobody thought for one moment about "staying in character."
Well, the theater certainly was not what it was. Some days Will just wanted to chuck it in.
But then it was passing difficult to make a living as a poet.
"Puck, then," said Will, "Mind you caper not with your left thigh raised above elbow-height. Thou shouldest not make a show of thy ungrown spout, not reveal the tiny lumps that rattle when thou don'st a codpiece! Forsooth, who dost thou hope to lure? A lady would laugh at thee, and a lusty shop-boy should want only to rummage thy fundament!"
Looking sullen, Ben said, "Methought my garments too tight, not loose, good master."
Shaking his head, Will scolded, "For shame! Thou madest a show of a sack that held but two nuts, and they but green and new! Um—hold a moment."
Quickly turning away, Will reached to a stool, or rather for what lay on it, the sides—the closely-written pages that held the scene they now rehearsed, that of the clod-pate Athenians in the dark wood rehearsing "Pyramus and Thisbe," until rudely interrupted by Puck and his magic.
Seizing his quill, Will dipped it into the inkhorn and beneath Bottom's line, "sweet hay hath no fellow," he quickly scrawled in the margin "Titania: I shall have my servants fetch thee new nuts!"
Mentally he noted to himself, I must tell Kempe to cross his legs uneasily when she saith that, but warn him not to make too lewd a show. We want a good laugh, not cat-calls and riot. And on second thought, Titania's line should be a bit more—more—you know, tumpty-tumpty-tum. He'd work on it.
With the ink sanded but still drying, the harried Will turned his attention back to the boy on stage. "Now, mind thy motions, lad! Art too much like one with the dancing-sickness. Recall, thou art shape-changer and fairy! Show me how you move like one! Come, come, aye, speed is well, move about as would a fly too quick for the swat, but mind how you move, how we see thee!"
Ben stood, shoulders hunched, with his hands covering the parts under discussion and nodded, blushing beneath the pale green makeup. "I know not what you mean, sir."
Ah. He had pushed too far. In a soothing tone, Will, said, "Now, fair to speak, thy voice hath the right ghastly turn for a hobgoblin. But as to thy motions, mind, when thou dost say 'bog,' wade through the mud! Say 'brush,' let us see thee daft aside the branches, or when thou sayest 'fire,' move like one leaping o'er coals! When thou speakest of a horse, be a horse, and caper! Drop to all fours and snuffle when thou art a hound, root as hog, stumble as headless bear, wave thy limbs like flame as fire! Use thy wits—thou hast seen all these—"
"Not a headless bear," muttered Ben with a shrug. "Not one that lives and runs."
"Then use thy imagination!" Will said. "Think of thyself as a blindfold bear!"
Strangely, as though someone whispered in his ear, Will heard, or thought he heard, a mocking voice: "He is but milk-fed and weak. We fair folk sup not upon sops and porridge, but upon living flesh and hot young blood!"
Will shook that right out of his head. It had no place in his merry frolicsome play, and anyway the meter was all wrong.
Yet that voice rang somehow familiar, sounding as he had dreamed Puck would speak. Aye, often enough while shaping his play he had dreamed of the mischievous sprite, fiend rather, a figure impish and taunting, somehow more terrifying than jolly. Ah, well, his Puck stood before him, fidgeting with the flapping bits of costume about his upper thighs. Raising his voice, Will called, "Places, all, places for Bottom's Are we all met! I will read Quince from here. Places, and Ben—Puck, I mean—once more from the top."
For Mabel, the sensation was way too peculiar. It happened just as she was about to kick the green creature in what she sincerely hoped was its most sensitive place. The strategy of a well-placed kick had once worked with her most annoying boyfriend, Trey Moulter. She had not only stopped him in his tracks but had got a fair amount of loft on him, not quite enough for a first down, but still.
Tangled memories whirled in her head, Trey, Mrs. Pepper, her favorite teacher, Russ, the fox boy, the stupid Gnome potion that left her naked and puking rainbows, Teek holding her close and her heart pounding, her turn on stage as Liza Doolittle—
They say your whole life passes before you before you die. It is true. They call it "living."
Mabel wasn't scared, though. For a second everything buzzed and blurred, and then, in slow-motion, and yet instantaneously at the same time, or did time even have any meaning, she had the strangest feeling of flowing, as if she had become liquid, as the tornado of memory went through her mind. Bodily, she somehow passed through the close-packed, thorn-speared trees without colliding with one or being stuck, and then everything was dark.
Am I dead? Did it really kill me? she wondered.
Then she thought, Mabel, snap out of it! You can't be dead if you can think that.
Nodding, she thought, You're right, Mabel, as usual! Thank you! Anyhow, look around—it's not all that dark. I'm in the hole in the middle of the trees!
"Gah!" she yelled aloud. "Earworm!"
That old song from kindergarten—"there's a hole in the bottom of the sea," it went, before going on and on and ON. "Get out of my head!"
The tune was just in her head. She couldn't hear a thing. Groping, Mabel tried to find a way between the trunks, but one butted up against another, with not a finger's width between. She stumbled over something soft and sprawled on a yielding surface. "Whoa! Sorry, uh—lady!" The body was naked, but warm and Mabel felt the chest move under her palms. She found the cheek and patted hard. "Hey, wake up!"
Nope, the woman was down for the count, as Grunkle Stan would say. Now that her eyes were adjusting, Mabel could see the others, arranged by chance or on purpose like the points of a compass—north, east, south, west, around the perimeter of the circular clearing, though not necessarily at those exact locations, but still equidistant from each other. Or as the weathervane on the Shack would say, W-H-A-T?
"Is this a volcano?" she asked aloud. The center of the clearing was the top of the hill, mounded but not peaked, and a jagged X cut through it, glowing orange from deep below. Mabel did not approach it. What the heck, she didn't have time to sight-see.
She reached into her sweater and retrieved IT.
"Grappling hook!" she yelled and fired the grapple to the top.
Two things happened just as it landed and snagged a firm hold. First, she caught a glimpse of the chopper hanging in the air up above the opening.
Second, something horrible, green, and cold poured over the lip above her, flowed down to the center of the clearing—it smelled awful—and, like thick smoke being sucked into a vacuum cleaner, it flowed down into the jagged glowing cross of the orange pit.
Mabel's eyes watered as the world spun around and around. Don't let me pass out! She thought.
Then, zip! she was flying upward as the grappling-hook line retracted.
What Fools these Morsels Be!
(2018)
10-The Pit of Despair
...mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.
Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura!
(…I found myself in a dark woods,
For I had lost the right path.
Oh! To speak of my harsh plight,
Of this savage and daunting wilderness,
Renews my memories and my fear!)
-Dante, Inferno, Canto I
Well that was a hell of a way to start.
Clinging to the grappling-hook line, Mabel succeeded in reaching the treetops, though they were hardly that—not twigged and brushy, but more like smooth, clammy round nubs with the texture of watermelons and about the size of beachballs, and fortunately lacking the lethal thorns that grew farther down the trunks. Struggling to climb up onto one treetop—hard to do, it was so globular and smooth—Mabel paused and waved at the chopper. Instantly it descended to hover just above her, and she freed the grapnel of her grappling hook from where it had chunked into the oozy flesh of two trees before hooking an arm over a skid.
The rush of the rotor wash and the shuddering of the chopper made her swallow hard, but, hey, she was Mabel Pines! She gave Amy a thumbs-up and then desperately grabbed the wrist of her hooked arm.
The helicopter lifted off, moving gently. Mabel gritted her teeth—Oughta lose at least ten pounds!—and hung on as the chopper descended to within five feet of the ground. Mabel felt someone grab her legs, looked down, and saw that two people, in fact, were hanging onto her—Wendy and Dipper, one leg to each. She let go her hold on the skid with her right hand and dropped her grappling hook, which fired.
Narrative convention would require it to strike Wendy, Dipper, or Grunkle Ford, or alternatively to ricochet off the first, bowl the second over, and make the third fall as he tried to catch his flailing nephew. In fact the grapple went one way, the pistol grip the other, and nothing got hit. Amazing, but that thing happens, like, one in a million times.*
The two eased Mabel to the ground. Dipper was yelling at her. Wendy was yelling at her. Ford came running up and yelled at something or someone. Probably her.
"Wait, wait," Mabel said. "I gotta pull the gum out of my ears."
That was a stretchy experience. Dipper's eyes widened as the long pink strings of bubble gum came out, and his face turned green, though not as much so as the Piper's, as she rolled up the two stringy threads of gum, balled them both into a wad, and stuck it back in her mouth. "That's better!" she said, chomping as she bent to retrieve and retract the grappling hook.
"Yuck," Dipper managed to say. "Mabel! That came out of your ears!"
"I know," she said, scowling. "Why not? I put it there. I figured if I didn't hear the stupid pipes—"
"But, dude," Wendy said, "it's been in your ears!"
"Which are perfectly clean," Mabel said. "I washed 'em in the shower. But there's no time for that! We gotta get those four people out before they die! And there's something else inside there, too! And come to think of it, I don't even know how I got there!"
Stanford Pines turned pink and cleared his throat. He muttered something too softly for any of them to hear.
Mabel wriggled a little finger in her left ear. "Did I miss some gum? What was that, Grunkle Ford?"
Drawing himself up resolutely, Ford said, "That . . . your winding up inside the ring of trees, well, that, I mean—was my fault. I tried Fiddleford's teleportation device, but not aiming at you, understand. My goal was, um—to get the Piper away from you. I . . . think my aim was probably off by a few feet, so instead of the Piper, I teleported you. Um, how did it feel?"
"Like being drunk," Mabel said.
"Like you were a glass of water being swallowed?" asked Dipper.
"Huh? That's crazy!" She waggled a pinky in her other ear. "Feels like I stuck a little fish in there! No, not like being drunk, being drunk, like that time I polished off half a bottle of leftover champagne and the whole Shack turned into a bouncy castle and I was sooo sick in the toilet. That was fun."
Dipper did a double-take. "When did you ever—"
"Not important, Broseph! It felt, um, like I was flowing down some demon gullet or some deal, Grunkle Ford! Focus! Let's not get into who did or didn't raid the kitchen after some dumb old wedding reception was over! There's four unconscious naked people in there, they won't wake up, and I don't know when old Pipey's gonna climb back out of his nasty hole—"
"Hole!" Ford said. He shaped an imaginary form in the air. "Glowing, as if from lava? Orange? Shaped like an X roughly carved in the ground?"
Mabel nodded. "Yes, uh-huh, right, you got it . . . do I owe you a prize or something? No? Yeah, something thick and green and smoky poured down from the top into the hole in the ground, and I got the feeling the smoke really was the green thing with the weird hands and the pipes and the great big—"
Wendy mimed zipping her lip.
Mabel hesitated and then ended, "—ego."
"It probably was the Piper. Where did I put the—there it is." He picked up the radio handset from where he'd dropped it. Hazard had lifted up again and was orbiting the hill with the bizarre forest crown. Ford pressed the transmit button and then blinked. "Um, I forgot what our call is."
"Give it to me, Dr. P," Wendy said She took it. "Ground One to Eagle One. Come in, Eagle One."
"Eagle One to Ground one, I hear you. Over."
Wendy handed the radio handset back to Ford, who said, "Amy, did the attack hurt you or damage the Agency's property? Amy? Oh. Over."
"Eagle One to Ground one, negative. Not hurt, not damaged. It was more like a burst of wind than anything else. Over."
"Excellent!" Ford said. Wendy was frowning and making signals. "Oh, Ground One to Eagle One, that is excellent! Listen, we have four casualties inside the woods, stunned but alive. Can you bring them out? Over."
"Eagle One to Ground One, a medevac up there is very tricky. I'll need someone with me to operate the hoist and lower the litter. Over."
"I'll do it," Mabel said.
"Mabel will—sorry, Ground One to Eagle One, Mabel volunteers. Over."
"Eagle One, landing now. Stay well away from the wash until I switch off the engine. Over."
"Eagle One, cleared to land," Ford said. "Wendy, where are you going?"
"We need to open up the space for her," she said. "Dip, bring your blaster. We gotta take out some of these trees—you blast 'em like I tell you, I'll chop 'em down!"
Imagine you're a logger who for some insane reason wanted to cut down a saguaro cactus. Don't actually do it, it's dangerous to life and limb and illegal to boot, but just picture it. Unlike a tree, the cactus has no thick, tough bark, now heavy wood, no heart-of-pine center. Chopping goes fast.
And Wendy was pissed. She swung her axe like Paul Bunyan did in the tall tales, sending one chunk flying with the forward stroke, widening the gash with the backstroke. Dipper, following her directions, used the disruptor pistol to blast through the bases of trees off to one side, taking care to Wendy's advice about attacking only the ones that would topple out and away, not inward to crush the victims or backward to crush him.
They might not have been deadly, though you'd think so, with the thorns and the weight and the crashing, oy! However, again unlike any tree in the world, each severed trunk immediately became a thick translucent, gluey green semi-liquid and splatted rather than crashed. And they stank. If you've ever smelled a skunk-and-polecat-and-bear battle in the heart of a glue manufacturing plant, you'd—no, cut that, nobody's ever smelled that, but anyway, the dissolving trees reeked.
Trying to hold his breath, Dipper had cleared a lane nearly to the center of the grove before Wendy tapped him out. "Lay out, dude. I gotta fell the last five carefully."
Dipper stepped back seeing that even the stumps had dissolved and the green gunk was sinking into earth as it bubbled frantically. Wendy took out one, two, three, four, five trees—and now the sun touched the sprawled bodies inside the opening.
"Good enough!" Amy Hazard said.
"Want us to drag them into the open?" Wendy asked.
"No, no, there's enough clearance for the litter now. Wendy, Mabel, come with me. Dipper, Chief, you go into the opening and load the victims onto the litter. Be sure to strap them in tight, chest, belly, legs! Look, once we have those four aboard, I won't be able to take all of you on. One of you, but the other three will have to stay here, and that thing may come back, so—"
"Take Mabel, please," Ford said.
Dipper put his hand on his sister's shoulder. "Yeah, she's a good nurse. I mean, not trained, but she's really good at helping sick people."
"Aw you guys! I'll go!" Mabel said.
"Then come on," Amy told her. "You, too, Wendy. I have to give you both a crash course in how the hoist works."
In less than a minute the chopper hovered overhead. "Let's get that woman first," Ford said. He pointed toward the one who lay on the far side of the opening, where a semicircle of trees still curved. Ford knelt beside her, checking her pulse.
The litter came down on its line, Dipper and Ford eased the woman onto it and fastened the straps—she didn't even give a groan or a wink, she was still out cold—and Dipper said, "I don't see their clothes anywhere."
"Blankets are in the chopper," Ford said. He gestured to the helicopter, where Mabel gave them a thumbs-up, and they guided the line to keep it clear of the thorns. The woman rose straight up. Ford cleared his throat and spoke loudly over the thrumming of the rotors: "I know this is embarrassing to you, Mason, but think of yourself as a medic. Next, we'll take this woman closer to the, ah, exit you and Wendy made. Women and children first, you know."
They loaded the pale blonde woman next, and Dipper didn't look away from her shapely breasts or, um, the rest of her, but he didn't stare either, and he did everything as efficiently as he could manage.
Two away. The dark guy went next, since he lay a little farther from the fallen trees. Three up. A rumbling sound, a vibration that the chopper didn't account for.
"Something's happening with the rift," Dipper told Ford.
"This is the last one. Here comes the litter. Once the helicopter is away, I'll break out the quantum destablizer. Ugh, this man's heavy. Help me roll him onto the litter, please."
All four up—and the orange rift pulsated, dimmed, brightened, billows of something, probably heated hair, no, make that hopefully heated air, distorting everything as they puffed out at five-second intervals.
The chopper dropped low, but did not touch down, and Wendy leapt, axe in her left hand. She made a three-point superhero-type landing, right fist thrust down to earth, and then she rose again, her green eyes furious. "We saw what's happening. Come on, guys, before it busts through again!"
"You first. Wendy, you lead, then Dipper with the pistol, and I'll bring up the rear with my quantum destablilizer. I rarely say this, but shoot to kill, and if I should go down, don't stop to—"
"We don't leave a man behind!" Wendy snapped. "This way!"
Behind them the hill rumbled. The remaining weird trees shriveled like a slug thrown into a campfire,** and some bizarre creature started to coalesce from the green vapors.
"Hurry!" Wendy yelled. Her axe, an heirloom bequeathed her by Archibald Corduroy, uncanny and sensitive, hummed in her hand, and even in sunlight the head glowed, not with red heat this time, but with an unearthly, shimming blue-white glow. They plunged into the forest, the ordinary earthly one, Wendy following some path the others couldn't see.
"It's out!" Ford shouted, looking back over his shoulder and between the tree trunks. "There, ahead to the left—that low cliff! Backs to the wall! We can't outrun it! This is where we make our stand!"
The helicopter noise faded rapidly as the craft flew for Gravity Falls and its medical clinic.
Mabel, in the copilot seat, looking back, yelled into the headset, "It's twice as big now!"
"I'm sorry we don't have armament!" Amy's voice came back. "Mabel, take the microphone and change the frequency, that dial there, to 155.3400. Transmit Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, then wait fifteen seconds for a response before you do it again. When someone responds, tell them we're Eagle One One One with four wounded and we'll land at that park with the water tower. Request ambulance services, answer their questions. Go!"
Mabel followed instructions, got someone on the radio, and reported the emergency in Amy's words. The guy on the other end said he'd relay the information to the clinic and get Gravity Falls's two ambulances to Circle Park ASAP.
"Great," Amy said. "Now tell 'em I'm gonna need thirty, repeat thirty, gallons of QAV-1, quick as they can get it. I see the water tower now. Here we go."
And indeed, as the town came in view Mabel could see the flashing lights of two boxy ambulances. She checked the patients, now covered with gray GIB-issue blankets. All were breathing, all had pulses.
It felt as if she were in an express elevator. The copter touched down a little roughly, and Amy killed the engine. "Go, go, go!"
Mabel unbuckled, leaned out, and vomited on the grass, losing her gum in the process. "Glad it held off until we landed," she said as the rotors slowed and she wiped her lips. "Airsick. Hey, they're coming!"
The ambulances parked only about fifty feet away. Two EMT teams hustled up with gurneys. "Let us handle it, hon," one of the guys said as Amy unfastened the emergency belts that secured the four sleepers.
"Don't 'hon' me," snarled Hazard. She swung out of the helicopter. "Take the women first. Mabel, you go with them to the hospital." She raised her voice impatiently: "Anybody know where my damn fuel is?"
One of the EMTs said, "Dispatch said they alerted McGucket. He's got a pump for experimental—anyway, he's got it and he'll send or bring the QAV-1 over. He's only fifteen minutes away."
"I know him!" Mabel said as the EMTs started moving the men to the gurneys. "McGucket won't fail us!"
"Not us! You're going with the ambulances," Amy snapped. "No argument! Somebody's got to explain to the docs what's up with these people. OK, guys, Mabel here rides with one of you. Go on, get these people out of here!" As the ambulances fired up and rolled away, sirens wailing and lights flashing, she stood beside the helicopter and balled her fists. Through clenched teeth she growled, "Come on, come on, come on! I need gas, and I don't have fifteen minutes! Damn, damn, damn it!"
Had Ford been there, her agitation would have astonished him. She always had it under control.
But at the moment, Ford, Wendy, and Dipper were very desperately busy.
*"One in a million chances crop up nine times out of ten."—Paraphrased from Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites.
**This is just a macabre visualization of what was happening. Don't do this for real. Slugs have feelings, too, you know.
What Fools these Morsels Be
(Fall 2018)
11-Hell Burns, Fiends Roar
The ambulances wailed away with lights flashing, as they sped toward the clinic with the two couples and Mabel aboard, and Hazard had just enough time to call and make sure an Agency-approved medic would be on the spot. Just as she switched off her phone, a bright yellow HOWO tanker truck, a sawed-off model, jounced off the road and rumbled up to the helicopter. Dr. McGucket jumped out, leaving a younger man in a long-billed fishing cap behind the wheel. "Hidy, Deedee," McGucket called, getting right to work with the pump. "Reckon thirty'll do ya?"
"How much do you have in the tank?" Amy asked as she opened the filler cap.
"Jest brought what was left in th' truck, I got more at th' house, though. Truck gauge shows a tad over 400 liters. I can give ya a hundred gallons. How empty is she?"
"Sucking fumes," Amy said. "Do it!"
McGucket wore a yellow flame-retardant and anti-static coverall with hood. He pulled out a pair of safety goggles, looped them over his head, and tugged them in place before donning gloves and hauling the hose to the chopper. Once the fuel was flowing, McGucket said, "After I finish this, jest hang on an' let me run back to th' truck for a second."
Fueling went fast—the truck pump was designed to put a lot of QAV-1 fuel in the right place in a hurry. As soon as the last fuel gurgled into the chopper tank, McGucket closed the filler cap and hauled the hose back to the truck. As Amy climbed into the pilot's seat, he hustled back, having taken off the safety goggles and the hood. His white hair stood up like a pine forest around the dome of his bald head, and he carried some long item—it looked heavy—in a black leather case. He handed it up to Amy and said, "Deedee, straight now, Ford's in a mess o' trouble, ain't he?"
Amy rose to store the package. "He sure is. By the way, you can call me Amy."
Fiddleford grinned through his beard. "Amy Hazard, I know, and I also know your right name, too. Don't fret none, I got grade one Agency security clearance. But you're Deputy Director of the Northwest Pacific District, so, Deedee, right? Anyways, I'd be right proud if y'called me Fiddleford. Here, fire her up an' I'll git back. Oh—that's my son in th' truck yonder. I'd introduce you to my boy Tate, but you ain't got time t'waste. You got a tad over a hundred gallons in th' tank now. You better skedaddle—good luck, and I gotta tell ya, she kicks a mite!"
He ran and hopped back into the passenger seat of the tanker truck, his son put it in reverse, and as soon as it was a safe distance away Amy dusted off. The chopper shot straight up, and she thought how lucky it was that nobody in Gravity Falls flew private aircraft. One less thing to worry about.
She did have to dodge a banking Pteranodon, though, as she gained altitude and headed back to where she had left the others.
"Mabel wouldn't think this damn thing was so cuddly now," Wendy said. "How tall is it, would you guess, dude?"
"Eighteen or twenty feet," Dipper said, his voice tight.
Simultaneously, Ford said, "I estimate six meters!"
The creature that rose from the crack in the earth no longer looked like a bundle of sticks, nor like a weird-fingered green humanoid with a large set of Pan pipes. Now it towered treetop-tall and—and—metaphors won't do.
But picture what would happen if a completely insane sculptor had for some crazy reason decided to re-imagine an evil cockroach as something that walked erect and was close to twenty feet foot to head tall. And the materials he chose to sculpt in comprised a loathsome mixture of blood, lard, dark brown wax, and skeletal twigs. And the thing he sculpted had two slanting burning orange eyes, and six pulsating, glistening pits in place of a nose, and a reversed V-shaped gash of a mouth oozing slime, all in a broadly triangular head.
The overall effect of the skin gave the impression of something melting, dripping, and yet with a surface as striated and peeling as the bark of a giant sequoia, though the red-purple color of venous blood.
It waved four triple-jointed arms.
At the ends of the arms clawed three-fingered talons, opening, closing, grasping, the nails three inches tall, scythe-curved, blood red.
As for the sound coming from it—worse than terrible.
Because it lurched out onto the hill slope with absolute, ghastly silence, worse than any snarl or roar. The head swiveled like a praying mantis's, those searchlight eyes seeking them. They knew it. They knew it hunted them.
Ford held up his six-fingered left hand in a gesture that said, "Be silent!"
Dipper held his breath. He gripped the pistol disruptor, charged and ready. Wendy gripped her axe. The blade gleamed with cold blue spectral light.
Very slowly, like the minute hand of a clock rising from the half-hour to the three-quarter mark, Ford used both hands to raise his quantum destabilizer rifle.
Dipper saw vapors rising from the split hilltop behind the lumbering giant, rushing up from the pit at the center of the weird grove of trees. Well, from what was left of the grove of trees, anyway. As the gushing cloud touched them, they curled and twisted, withering, shrinking, turning green-gray but translucent.
The hill spewed as if it were a volcano, gushing pale green gases that as they expanded curdled into gray-green clouds shot through with wisping, viscous strings of violet and scarlet.
The dwindling, drooping thorn trees shriveled and shrank, browning, decaying as if exposed to some strong acid. Dipper squinted. The reddish-orange X-shaped gash in the hill grew as the miasma flowed through it. Though he clamped his teeth tight shut, he was thinking, Come on, Great-Uncle Ford, come on, shoot! Kill it!
A crazy memory hit him: Soos chasing him around the gift shop whacking him with a broom while yelling, "Kill it with fire!"
Only that hadn't happened, that had been only a story he'd made up while they were all falling through the Bottomless Pit. Or was it real? In his agitation, it seemed like something that had happened. Except he knew he'd made it up—
It was an irrational point for him to ponder, under the circumstances.
I don't want to die wondering whether something I remember was real or just a story!*
The gigantic, swaying form—not only four arms, Dipper saw now, but four legs, like crab's legs, sprawling to support the towering body—crept forward, descending until it stood at the base of the hill, a football field away.
Ford's quantum destabilizer reached the horizontal.
Dipper startled as something way to the left—a rabbit—broke cover in the tall grass and set off in long desperate bounding leaps for the trees. The creature saw it and thrust one of its claws, the fingers opening and closing like the maw of a spider.
In the moment of death, rabbits shriek, a heart-tearing, shattering screech, eerily like a human child in ultimate agony. This one screamed unbearably, the sound cut off as it flew through the air toward the monster, drawn like a steel nail to a magnet and—stretched impossibly, as if turned to liquid—and as it reached the creature, it exploded into sickening pink vapor and flying wisps of fur.
Wendy growled low.
The creature's head swiveled.
Ford whispered in a voice too low for any human ear more than ten feet from him, "Stay . . . completely . . . still."
Their backs were, literally, against the wall. The stone outcrop pressed into Dipper's hips and shoulders. His muscles wanted to tremble, but he fought to control his fear as once he had fought to keep an alien robot from targeting him and his great-uncle. Remaining motionless was as hard as anything he had ever done. He sensed Wendy tense beside him and thought, too late, that they should have spread out, not offered the monster a nice compact target.
Ford whispered again: "Steady . . . steady . . ."
A low thrumming sound came, growing louder.
Hazard was returning, the chopper still invisible somewhere above the forest canopy.
The monstrous thing obviously felt the vibrations or heard the sound. It reared, lifting its head toward the sky, questing to spot whatever was coming.
"The arms!" Ford said. He fired simultaneously with Dipper.
Their aim was good. The creature was holding all of its arms poised, waiting to attack whatever was coming from the air. Ford hit the upper right arm, Dipper the lower left. The beams exploded the alien flesh, and the monster staggered back—but then charged them, faster than a horse could run. It struggled to thrust its remaining claws at Dipper, on whom it seemed to have focused.
Wendy stepped in front of him. Dipper's pistol was recharging but not fast enough—
Ford fired again, blasting away one of its legs, and it lurched, hit the ground, rose again, bellowing—
"Not my man, you don't!" Wendy yelled.
The axe was a melee weapon, but that was enough in the grip of a flipping Corduroy. Wendy dodged under a grasping claw and sliced through one of the remaining arms where it joined the torso. The other arm, on the far side of the body from her, flailed.
Maddened, the creature swept its upper body in a twisting arch that struck Wendy and sent her rolling, but she landed on her feet. Ford swung his destabilizer rifle like a club, smashing into the gut of the thing—
The chopper emerged, and squalling, the Piper melted, starting to reshape its body—
"Cover me!" Ford said. "I think we have one chance!"
And as Dipper's pistol reached full charge again, he saw Wendy raising her axe, the helicopter swinging in an arc on the far side of the hill, and his great-uncle running like a halfback with the ball and the winning goal ahead—
And dense flaring green flames erupted from the hill.
*Soos confirms it was just a story. But he insists his pinball story was better, dawgs. Oh, and because it's bound to bug someone out there, the chapter title's from Shakespeare, Richard III, 4.4. Brush up your Shakespeare, guys!
What Fools these Morsels Be
(Fall 2018)
12-Willing to March into Hell
Hazard couldn't raise the ground party, and no wonder. As she made a tight circle she saw the three of them backs to a ledge, and fifty yards away from them, between them and the erupting hilltop, something terrible pulsated and bulged. She swept low, passing just above the thing, and it flashed out a pulse of energy that once more shoved the helicopter—though not as strongly.
As she regained control, she saw Dipper firing his pistol at the thing, scoring a hit and ripping through its body, but it shrank in upon itself and healed the ragged hole in seconds.
Wendy charged at it, getting in for a good chop with her axe, and again it pulsated and bulged obscenely as she retreated. It followed her, only for Ford to blast it with his quantum destabilizer rifle, set to a broad beam and high power. Most of it vaporized, but the crawling, hopping remnant at once began to re-form.
From her vantage point, Hazard realized that the gas pouring out from the vent streamed to wherever the thing was—and fed into it, giving it substance.
That had to be stopped before it could be stopped—
But the three humans facing it probably didn't know what a losing battle they fought—though they were probably getting an inkling by now.
Hazard reached a decision. From here, all she could do was distract the beast, and that wasn't enough.
She flew as near the hill as she dared—and set the chopper down. As she killed the engine, she hauled out the gift McGucket had given her and, leaping from the cockpit just as the creature, the demon, whatever the nightmarish ruddy-pink mass of warts and mismatched legs and mouths and eyes was, blasted the chopper with another bolt of energy, sending it onto its side, the still-moving rotors breaking, spinning in a lethal whirl this way and that.
Damn, the weapon McGucket had handed her was heavy.
She thought she knew what it was. It looked easy enough to charge—just press the green button like this—good Lord, the thing shook her like a jackhammer as the current surged in it—and this was self-evidently the trigger—
Ford was sweating, yelling out orders to Dipper—they had to coordinate their fire, keep the creature off-balance. It was something like the Shapeshifter, but even faster, its forms not like any normal animal but straight out of nightmare. Now it was the size of a pony, with four sprawling legs, knees bending the wrong way, the body a mass of what looked like rotting blubber, the head rising from the exact center of the nearly circular mass, tentacles writhing, no nose visible, but rows on rows of compound eyes.
It could send shockwaves by crooking the tentacles like scorpion tails. Ford had seen it send the helicopter swinging like a pendulum before it came down hard—had Hazard crashed the out-of-control craft? And then with another blast the damned thing knocked the chopper on its side, but there ran Hazard, carrying—
Oh, good God, surely McGucket hadn't—
Yes. Yes, he had.
"Mason! I'm going to try to flank it. Concentrate on whichever tentacle is rising and curling! Wendy, keep low—if you get a chance, take it, but don't charge it! Wish me luck!"
He'd never been an athlete in his youth, but in the Multiverse, during those thirty Earth years he'd spent traveling through how many uncounted dimensions, Ford had developed muscle and tone, and though his reactions weren't what they'd been at thirty, they weren't bad for an old guy.
He saw the thing focus on him briefly, saw the lash of a tentacle, tucked and rolled, and caught only the edge of the blast. It shook him but didn't slow him.
Dipper dodged in his direction and with his pistol disintegrated the tentacle before it could blast again.
Ford started to count under his breath, one thousand one, one thousand two—the disruptor took eight seconds to charge, and where was Wendy? On the far side of the creature now, out of sight—
"Hazard!" Ford shouted, his voice hoarse. "Trade!"
When he was close enough, he tossed the quantum destabilizer—McGucket built them well, they couldn't be seriously damaged by anything less than a ten-story drop to concrete—and Amy dropped the weapon she carried and caught the rifle on the fly. "Can't throw it, too heavy!" she said as she flew past him.
"Ignore the head! Blast the tentacles! And watch out for the kids!"
"Roger!"
Ford grabbed the experimental weapon, saw it was reading a full charge, and veered toward the hill, still erupting its vile vapors.
One chance, just one.
The ragged crater spewed not only the green gas, but also incandescent lava, ropy streams of it, no doubt bedrock melted by the unearthly fumes.
He heard Wendy scream, "No!" but had no time to look. Something sounded like a redwood crashing in the forest.
Then he stood on the slope of the hill, the eruption only feet away. Hoping Fiddleford knew what he was doing, Ford aimed the Annihilator not at the monster but at the hill and squeezed the trigger.
She kicked a mite.
Ford had the sensation of flying backward through the air, hit hard on his shoulders and neck, and fought to hold onto the shreds of consciousness. What was happening, what was happening, where was Wendy, where—
Fighting double vision, he slammed his hand down on the recharge button.
The Annihilator started to shimmy as its capacitors charged again.
"Chief!" yelled Hazard.
"I got you, Dip!" Wendy yelled at the same time. Dipper wasn't moving, but she stood over him with her axe, daring the creature to attack him.
It had lost interest. Now it flowed, slithered, a boneless snake heading toward Ford, who knelt fifteen yards from the hill, now a white-hot seething mass of molten earth and stone.
"Shit!" Hazard ran to put an angle between herself, Ford, and the serpentine thing that seemed set on attacking him. She fired from the hip and cut about half of the creature away, the part that would have been a head, had it owned a head.
The remnant thrashed, trying to re-form.
"Come on, come on!" The quantum destabilizer was still cycling. The sickly green mass that had been something like a serpent now humped along, still intent on attacking Ford.
A disruptor beam sizzled into it, cutting it in half again. Madly, it pulled itself into a wobbly sphere no larger than a yoga exercise ball and rolled again toward Ford.
"Shoot it!" Wendy yelled.
The destabilizer was still charging. It had been fired too many times. Hazard ran right up to the thing, clubbed it with the butt of the rifle. It split open, a mass of teeth, and tried to seize the rifle. Then Wendy was there, beside Hazard, slicing into the thing with an axe. "Why—won't—it—die?"
"Get away from it! I've got a shot!" shouted Ford, coming toward them.
The maddened thing spun to face him as Hazard hooked Wendy's waist and dragged her back. "Take it!" she yelled.
A blast like a stick of dynamite sent them flying. Ford had been tossed back, too. "It's still alive!" he called. "Hazard, use the rifle!"
"Gah!" Hazard held the rifle out to Wendy. "Think my ankle's broken. Get closer to it and kill it!"
"I don't even see—"
But then she did. It thrashed, it jerked, it squalled.
It was the size of a small cat, trying to take on a humanoid form. It crawled on hands and arms, dragging itself toward the molten hill.
Wendy took no chances. She followed it.
The thing rolled over. It had wide, milky eyes with glazed gray pupils, a wizened monkey face, looking a thousand years old. Two arms and two apparently broken legs, spindly, so it crawled with them trailing uselessly.
It cried like a newborn baby.
Shaking, Wendy pulled the rifle up.
"Nnnnoooo," it whined. "Please. Please. Not kill. Please." Tears rolled from its huge, ancient eyes. "I lose, I lose, no kill—"
"Too late," Wendy said between clenched teeth. It screamed as she tightened her finger on the trigger, and a moment later the beam absolutely vaporized it.
Hazard had crawled over to where Dipper lay. As Wendy turned, she said, "He's breathing. He's breathing."
Ford, still staggering, came over. "Well, this is a mess. Amy, how's the leg?"
"Ankle," Hazard said. "Maybe we can splint it. We've got to carry Dipper out—"
Ford took the rifle from Wendy and used it like a crutch, steadying himself. He went to the scorched piece of earth and prodded the ashes. "Let me take a reading. This is vital." He pulled out a compact anomaly detector and studied it. "It's gone," he said at last. He gazed at the spot where the hill had been, now a flat, still red-hot mass. "The Annihilator, Fiddleford calls it. Remarkable. It annealed soil and stone and sealed off the rift. We'll have to return—
"Ford!" Wendy said, her voice full of tears. "Dipper's hurt!"
"Sorry." He made his way over and painfully knelt beside Dipper, who lay sprawled on his back. With two fingers Ford checked his pulse, then opened his eyelids. "He needs medical attention. This looks as if it may be a concussion. Amy, I'll go check the helicopter. The radio may still be working. We're none of us in any shape to haul Dipper out."
"We can do it if we have to," Hazard said.
Ford gingerly examined her ankle. "No. Badly swollen. I'll hurry. I think I'm steady now."
He only stumbled a little as he hurried over to the chopper. He hoisted himself into the cockpit and tried the radio, tuning it to an Agency frequency. A young man's voice said, "Acknowledge, P. Agent Ranger here. Passphrase?"
"Charlie Sierra Foxtrot Papa, two, eleven, twenty-three, thirty-one, forty-one, ninety-seven. Over."
"Roger, Chief!" Ranger said. "Over."
"I've got our GPS coordinates. We need air medevac for three people, plus one uninjured, ASAP. What do you have available?"
"Nighthawk Four's on the pad and fueled. Over."
Ford gave him the coordinates and had him read them back. "What's the ETA? Speed is crucial."
"I'm sending the go signal, sir. ETA, hold a sec . . . thirty minutes."
"Make it twenty!" Ford said. "Over and out."
The yellow helicopter—Agency helicopters came in all shades and colors except black—bore a red cross symbol and Hazard, after Wendy had found the dropped and miraculously unbroken handset, talked the pilot in for a landing in the most level clear space. Three crewmen—well, one man and two women, one of the latter a paramedic—loaded Dipper and Hazard , Wendy and Ford climbed aboard on their own, and Ford said, "A-Med OR, and hurry," and they were off.
The flight took them out of the Valley, in a roughly northwesterly direction, to a heavily fenced-off area that from the air looked like a railroad freight depot. It actually was Hazard's headquarters for the Pacific Northwest District of the Agency, and it included a VSTOL airport, two helipads, and an eight-unit hospital. The hospital was completely underground.
The paramedic—NP Angel, her name was, appropriately enough—took Dipper to imaging while the resident doctor saw to Hazard's injured ankle.
Ford paced. Wendy sat in a chair, head down, hands clasped. "I'm sure he'll be all right," Ford told her quietly.
"I hope so," she said.
After half an hour that seemed to last for most of a day, the doctor came in and gave them a thumbs-up and a grin. "The young man will be all right. He's coming around now. He's going to have a headache and disorientation for a day or two, but the MRI looks good. No driving for him for the next, oh, week or so. I'll give you a list of symptoms—you're his Magic Girl, I take it—"
Wendy was weeping but smiling, too, and not trusting her voice, she nodded.
"I heard a lot about you," the doctor said. "I think he's a very lucky young man. Let me see—he's off track practice for at least two weeks. Anyway, I'll trust you to keep checking to make sure he's not having any worrisome complications. Over-the-counter painkillers for the headache. He said he took a fall. Make sure he's not dizzy or having balance problems tomorrow. He was worried about missing class—class should be all right, but if he's nauseated, has blurred or double vision . . .."
It started to sound like one of those commercials for a medication that ends with a list of possible side effects you wouldn't wish on a politician.
"Can I see him?" Wendy asked.
"Sure. Oh, Dr. Pines, I understand we're expecting four more patients?"
"Yes, coming by ambulance from Gravity Falls. Two men, two women. They'll come in sedated, and they'll need Class M counseling before they're released."
"Understood," the doctor said gravely. "Mrs. Pines, let me show you to your husband's room."
Dipper lay propped up on three pillows, looking woozy. But he grinned as she came in and hugged her, even though he had to be careful of an IV. "They gave me goofy juice," he said. "Oh, Wendy, I was so scared you were going to be hurt."
"Came through fine," she said, kissing him. "You got the worst of it. That thing blasted you about ten feet through the air, and you hit hard."
"What happened? Did we get it?" Dipper asked. "What's wrong?"
She heaved with sobs as they hugged each other. When she could speak, she said, "Oh, Dip, we kept just cuttin' away at it, choppin' it down, until it was the size of a doll. It looked so hurt and miserable, and it was—was crying—and it begged me not to kill it—"
She broke down again.
"You did what had to be done," Dipper whispered to her.
"It—looked so helpless at the end—"
"It wasn't though. I'm glad you got it. I don't think even Grunkle Ford could've done that. Some tough jobs—call for a Corduroy."
The door opened, and Mabel barged in. "Hope I'm not interrupting anything!" she said brightly. Where in the world did she find those nurse's caps?* "We brought the victims in. Grunkle Ford says they're gonna give them the flashy-thing treatment, kinda like McGucket's memory eraser but without the side effects of making 'em cuckoo-clock bonkers. They—what's wrong, Wendy?"
Wendy rubbed her eyes. "Rough day, Mabes," she said.
"Yeah, I'm sorry I missed it, but I was helping with the two couples. Dr. le Fievre said I'd make a good nurse. There was an Agency guy there too, and he insisted on giving them some kind of knockout injection before the ambulances came to bring them here. This is where that Professor guy brought us that time when we though Pacifica was kidnaped or dead, remember? We stayed in a Pullman car! That was fun. Anyway—how are we getting back to college? They told me Amy's not gonna be flying for a couple months."
"I'm sure Dr. P. will find us a ride," Wendy said. "Listen, your brother got kinda knocked out. He's gotta take it easy for the next week or so. You're gonna help, right?"
"Nurse Mabel is on the job!" she said brightly.
Dipper rolled his eyes, wincing at the strain. "Oh, well," he said. "Maybe I'll survive."
*Dipper later put the question to her. "Where do you keep finding those nurse's caps you wear when somebody has a cold or the dogs get their shots?" But she had just smiled and said complacently, "I'll never tell."
What Fools these Morsels Be
(Fall 2018)
13-How the Light Gets In
Stanford had to listen to Stanley. That was part of his penance. As Stanford lay face-down on the bed, his twin glared at him. "So you took Mabel, Wendy, and Dipper to fight this thing? And everybody got wounded? For dumb! What were you thinking, Ford?"
With a sigh, Stanford said, "I was thinking that the Earth would be better for ridding itself of this demon, Stanley. And yes, I underestimated it and overestimated our weaponry. I should have called you in, but—the young people have experience, and Hazard was there—"
"Here ya go." Stan painted iodine on the longest scratch on Ford's back, the one that led from the middle of his left shoulder almost all the way down to his butt crack.
"Ow!"
"Ya want a lollipop?" growled Stan. "Or how about a nice Hertz doughnut?"
"A what now?"
With a grin, Stan painted the red iodine over a cluster of parallel scratches on Ford's other shoulder."
"Yeow! Stanley!"
"Hurts, don't it?" Stan said with a chuckle. "Look, why didn't you go see the doctor? You got abrasions, scratches, three bruises unless that's two and they had a baby. Your spine may be outa whack, for all I know."
"I had imaging done," Ford said patiently. "No bones broken, just surface contusions and scrapes. But why, pardon me, the hell are you using iodine, when there are—"
"'Cause I want you to remember this, Sixer," Stan said. "For next time. Jeeze Louise, when I think of you, Dipper, and that Hazard babe all gettin' hurt—"
"And Wendy," Ford said morosely.
Stanley put away the iodine and started to apply bandages to the three or four deeper cuts. "Wait, what? What happened to Wendy?"
With a sigh, Ford said, "She had to make a tough decision. And I think her wound is inward, not on the surface." He raised his head. "I heard the helicopter pass over. Let's go."
"Here's a shirt." Stan tossed him a mulberry-colored turtleneck. "Won't show if the iodine ain't completely dry yet. Where's Lorena?"
"She's hand-holding Wendy up at the Shack," Ford said. He slapped his pocket. "Keys, keys, where—"
"I'll drive us," Stan said. "If you think you can walk up the hill as far as my house."
"I can do it," Ford said. "Nothing wrong with my legs. Thank you, Stanley."
"For what?" Stan waited while Ford slipped his shoes on. "For slappin' some antibiotic on you? That's no big deal."
"For doing it so Lorena didn't have to," Ford said. He smiled. "I can take being bawled out from you. It's harder coming from Lorena."
They walked uphill to Stan's house, Ford got into the front seat of the Stanleymobile, and Stan drove it uphill to the Shack. Lorena met them at the door. "How is she?" Ford said softly.
"I think she'll get over it. It will take time. Is Dipper going to be-?"
"Yes, he was stunned but he's showing no alarming symptoms. Just muscular aches and pains."
Stanley knocked on his own temple. "Yeah, he's got the Pines hard head."
"The helicopter passed over. I'll drive the young people out to the landing—"
"No, I'll drive," Stan said firmly. "You ride. You get the front seat middle, Mabel always rides shotgun, and we'll put Wendy and Dipper in back. I'll go get 'em."
He went in, glanced at the clock—four-forty, the kids would be back in Crescent City by seven or thereabouts—and found everybody up in the attic. He paused at the door, took a deep breath, and slapped on a grin. "Hey, knuckleheads!" he said. "Your ride home's waitin'. Drop your blocks and grab your socks and get a move on! And, hey, you should hear how Sixer's braggin' on you guys. You did good, kids. You did real good."
Wendy gave him such a sad smile that Stanley's heart felt as though it were melting. She helped Dipper downstairs, though—he was a little bit lame—while Mabel donned a nurse's cap, this one with wings and a big red cross in the center of the brim. "I'm gonna take care of him," she announced.
"Maybe he can survive that," Stan said. She punched him on the arm. "Ow! Just kiddin', Pumpkin. You take care of both of 'em."
He held her back while Wendy and Dipper went out through the gift-shop door. "Hey, Sweetie," he whispered. "You see that either of them's in trouble, you call me pronto, got it? Not Ford—me."
"Thanks, Grunkle Stan," she said.
Soos and Melody came out to say goodbye and remind them that everyone was invited for Thanksgiving and that they just had to come spend the Christmas break at the Shack. Then Stan drove them to the McGucket estate, where a helipad now occupied the old three-hole golf course way out back.
Another yellow helicopter waited. Fiddleford escorted them back, they climbed in—and saw that Deputy Director Hazard was in one of the passenger seat, her left ankle in a cast and crutches stowed beside the seat. "Chief," she said. "I'm taking a week medical leave, if that's all right with you. I'm going to accompany pilot Pakaa on this run just to make sure he handles this bird right."
"Aloha!" said the chubby pilot with a grin as the others climbed aboard and strapped in. He gave a gesture—a fist but with pinky and thumb extended and a quick rotation. "I got this. You sit back, relax, and leave the flying to me. Rajah, Director?"
"That's affirmative," replied Hazard. "The leave Chief?"
"Take two weeks," Ford said from the hatchway. "With pay, and it doesn't come out of your vacation."
"Thank you," she said.
And in a few minutes Pakaa got clearance, lifted off, and turned the chopper west by southwest and began whistling a tune that no one could hear over the rotor noise. When he set down, safely enough, at the Crescent City airport, Mabel paused before getting out. "Mahalo!"
"Hey, t'anks yourself!" he said. "Careful getting out, now."
"Hang on," Hazard called after them, struggling a little with the crutches until Wendy and Dipper helped her out. "There should be an Agency car here for us. Pakaa, fuel up and wait for me. I'm going to see these guys home." She paused. "Second thought, put up at a hotel and I'll meet you here tomorrow at 0900 for the flight back. Guys, OK if I borrow your sofa for another night?"
"Sure!" Mabel said. "Come on! Where's our car? Is it a limo?"
"It's even better," Hazard said, swinging along on her crutches.
It was a florist's van.
The ride was smooth—Hazard drove, though both Wendy and Dipper offered—and the van had been redone to be quite comfortable, although the handcuffs and leg shackles stored in netting might give a random passenger pause. Hazard didn't need directions at all.
The two dogs, Tripper and DC, met them with that joyful over-the-top reaction that all loyal pups—especially genius ones like Tripper—always gave when their best human friends returned after an absence of a weekend or fifteen minutes, whichever.
"Look," Hazard said, "you all must be exhausted and hungry. What about ordering in?"
Dipper shook his head, which no longer hurt all that much. "Nobody makes runs this far out."
Mabel chirped, "But I can go pick up something and be back in half an hour. Who's in the mood for what?"
Wendy just shrugged. She had been unusually quiet, and even Dipper's touch-telepathy with her found her sad and uncommunicative. Dipper had no preference, so Mabel said, "How about Japanese? Amy, do you like Japanese?"
"Love it," she said. "Is there a good place?"
"Shiokaze!" Mabel said. "It's not far, and we all like it. I got a menu here somewhere!" she opened a kitchen drawer and began to rummage.
They knew what they liked and Mabel wrote the order down. "Let me get you some money," Dipper said.
"Nope," Hazard told him. She fished in her wallet and handed him a gold-embossed black credit card. "Remember you were sworn in as an acting Agent? This is the company credit card. You and Mabel drive in and get the food, put it on this, and be as lavish as you like. I'll stay here and rest my ankle, and Wendy and I can have some girl talk."
"Yay!" Mabel said. "I'm gonna get an onigiri platter to share, and sashimi and kare-raisu, and a sushi and tempura mix—let me just feed the dogs first!"
She did, and she and Dipper set off to wreak havoc on the Agency's field budget. Hazard sat on the sofa and patted the cushion next to her. "Sit," she said.
Wendy did. "I feel so—" she started and then just trailed off.
"Yeah, wish I could've done it instead of you," Hazard said, stroking her hair. "I'm used to it. It was self-defense, you know."
"Yeah, but it seemed so—little and helpless, I don't know. I was crazy mad because it had hurt Dip, and I knew that it was evil, but it was begging me, and I killed it anyhow. I don't know if Dip would've done that."
"He would if it had hurt you," Amy said. "Look, Wendy, there aren't any easy ways. I'm sorry it had to be you, but understand, girl—that helplessness, that begging, that was just its final weapon. If it had reached the hill, burrowed in, hit whatever was left underground of the rift, it would have reformed and come after you, Dipper, and Mabel. And Dr. Pines, too. You did the right thing."
"It doesn't feel that way."
Amy put an arm around her shoulders. "You can't rationalize it, I know. You did what your brain knew was the only thing, but your feelings—they haven't caught up yet. Give it time. Are there counselors at your university?"
"Yeah. But—"
"You don't have to go into details with a counselor. But let them know you're having a case of the guilts for having done something in anger. There are ways of dealing with it."
"How did you deal with it? The first time?" Wendy asked.
"Got drunk. Shacked up for a day and a night. Finally realized that was the wrong way to handle it and talked it out with a therapist. It does work. At least you've got Mabel and Dipper to help. They've got your back—and they need you. You'll get through it."
Quite unexpectedly, Amy kissed Wendy's cheek, like a mother would. Wendy smiled. "Hey, hey," she said. "If circumstances were—"
"Not a pass," Amy said. "But when I think about it—Dipper's such a lucky guy."
After a moment, Wendy said, "And I'm lucky to have him."
"So we'll just leave it at something that would have been nice, but we'll manage without."
"Thanks," Wendy said.
A few minutes later Wendy and Dipper returned with enough food to feed a normal group of four for about two days, plus—
"Sake for everybody!" Mabel crowed. "Dogs excepted!"
"Not me," Dipper said. "My head hurts enough already. I'll stick to tea."
But Hazard and Wendy had some, and Mabel had more than she should have. The next morning Amy headed out to the flower van. Wendy heard her and came out to see her off. "Thanks for the talk," she said, hugging Amy awkwardly. "You take care of that ankle."
"You take care of your guy," Hazard said. "And your heart."
She drove away, Wendy turned to go back inside, and Dipper was there to hug her. "How's it going?" he asked.
She kissed him and thought to him: I think it's gonna be OK now. And I'm lucky to have you, Dipper.
—Other way around, Magic Girl. So did you and Amy have your girl talk?
Yeah, we did. And it's OK between us. We didn't do anything but talk—
—I wasn't going to ask, Wen.
Well. Yeah, she kinda likes me, and I like her, but that's as far as it will ever go. We'd better get ready for school. I'll do the driving for the next week or so. How's your head?
—Probably better than Mabel's this morning. Maybe we'd better drop her off and pick her up this afternoon. I'll ask her.
She snuggled in his arms. I didn't get drunk last night. But tonight, if you're sure you're feeling all right—
—I'm really OK, Wen.
Good. Because tonight we're gonna lock our bedroom door, because what I need is to shack up.
—Shack-?
"Big time," she whispered in his ear. "You up for it?"
"I will be," he promised.
The End