The Case of the Arctic Anomaly

(September-December 2012)

1-Closet Skeletons

In the late afternoon of Labor Day, Stanley Pines and his twin brother Stanford drove out of Gravity Falls for some miles, finally stopping just short of the moderately larger town of Hirschville. There they shared dinner at a restaurant with an outdoor seating area, a deck perched over a scenic river.

It was a coolish day, not exactly uncomfortable, but with a definite touch of autumn, and although the main dining room was crowded, the brothers were able to score a satisfactory outside table not very close to the deck railing. The sinking sun still supplied some warmth, but they wanted privacy more than comfort, and they had that. Of the dozen outside tables, theirs and one across the way were the only two with customers seated, and the other occupied table had two middle-aged couples celebrating a birthday or anniversary or something. They were cheerful and loud.

Which suited the Pines twins, because they had things to discuss. Once they had put in their orders—sirloin, medium edge of rare, with a big baked potato and roasted asparagus for Stanley, a dinner-sized chef's salad with a side of salmon mousse for Stanford—they could have a private conversation without fear of being overheard.

For a few moments, though, they just sat companionably, enjoying the last of the day as the sun settled toward the horizon. "Lovely spot," Ford said, gazing out across the moderately deep river gorge. Below them the stream, dwindled by a long, fairly dry summer, poured in whitewater rapids over rounded boulders. Down there the shadows had already fallen. Straight across and a hundred yards away, the far slope of the gorge grew thick with deep green pines and firs, but here and there hickories stood already hinting at the gold-yellow torches they would be in October with the turning of the leaves. Ford repeated, "Lovely."

"Not bad scenery," Stanley agreed. "Hope the food's good."

"It is highly rated," Ford assured him.

"Ya can't believe everything you read online," Stan warned him.

"At any rate, the salmon mousse received five stars out of five. Most of the Welp! reviewers have nothing but praise for it."

As they waited for their drinks—beer for Stanley, a white wine for Stanford—Stan took out a pocket notebook and a pen. He'd been doing that a lot since beginning to recover his lost memories after Weirdmageddon. "Great idea for an exhibit," he said, scribbling. "I'll tell Soos. Buy a mounted salmon at an estate sale or pawn shop, attach some fake antlers, and there ya go, a salmon moose."

"That," said Ford, "is an extraordinarily lame pun."

"Yeah, but the suckers eat it up," Stanley said, grinning. "They'll line up to have pictures taken with the mysterious Salmon Moose of Gravity Falls! You'll see." He tucked the notebook away and his expression faded from grin to wistful regret. He sipped some water and then said, "The Shack feels so quiet now that the kids have gone back home."

"Quiet?" Ford laughed, though not altogether cheerfully. "From nine o'clock on, literally dozens of people trooped through the place!"

"More than dozens. Exactly four hundred and thirty-nine paid admissions. At twenty bucks a head, that's $8,780. For a Labor Day, that's a great haul, Poindexter. Which reminds me, did your lawyer guy draw up that agreement about the Shack?"

"I told you," Ford said patiently. "The document will be ready for our signatures on Monday morning."

Stan rolled his eyes. "Forgive me for having a temporary memory slip! OK, Monday. I just wanna make sure we got this covered for Soos before we go take a look-see at the boat you got your eye on, OK?"

A pause followed while the waiter served a stein of Rainier and poured a glass of wine. The two men remained silent until the young fellow left them alone again, and then a troubled-looking Ford asked, "Truthfully, Stan, are you still having trouble with short-term memory?"

Stan took a sip of beer and shrugged. "Eh, a little. Not as bad as it was, and every time I remember something from the old days, it reminds me of something else. Like remembering Waddles led to Mabel, Mabel led to Dipper, he led to Wendy, and somehow I don't think that I ever completely forgot Soos. I think I got the whole summer back now, except for the triangle guy. Dipper and Mabel showed me his stature, but all I could think of was the back of a dollar bill."

"The Eye of Providence does resemble Bill," Ford said. "But if you can't remember him, all the better for you. How about your life before this summer?"

"Still a bunch of blank spots, but they're getting smaller. And there's stuff I wonder about. Did I once get married to some woman who liked owls?"

"I . . . have no direct knowledge of anything like that," Ford said.

"Eh, maybe it was a dream or something."

Uneasily, Ford went back to the other issue. "As to the agreement, the papers will be ready for out signatures, but I'm still not sure about this step. I mean, turning my house into a tourist trap—"

"Water under the bridge and way out to sea by this time, Ford. Relax, you got dough galore due in from your patents and the ones you and Old Man McGucket are splitting, right? There you go. You can come back to town and buy a better house! Besides, Gravity Falls wouldn't be the same without the Mystery Shack. Remind me again of what the terms of this deed or whatever it is."

With a sigh, Stanford replied, "You and I retain legal ownership of the building and property, share and share alike. We are agreeing to rent the—ugh—Mystery Shack to Mr. Ramirez—"

"Soos."

"Yes, him, for one dollar per year. He pays the house property tax, we pay for the land. Soos is entitled to use the profits from the, um, tourist business at his full discretion, paying himself the salary to which you and he agreed, while investing the remainder in improvements and maintenance. Should the business close for any reason, or should he tire of it and want to move on, he will receive all undisbursed profits accrued to that point, and full ownership of the house will revert either to us, or in case one of us survives the other, to the survivor, or if we are both deceased, to Mason and Mabel."

"Sounds good to me. Shh, here comes the food."

The young waiter served them expeditiously, refilled their water glasses, and asked if everything was satisfactory and if he could bring them anything else.

"Another beer in about fifteen minutes," Stan said.

"Nothing else for me," said Ford, whose bottle of Cascade Grande Chardonnay was still close to full. "Thank you."

Stan buttered a roll and glanced at the small plate in front of Ford, not the salad, but the one with a fillet of smoked salmon wrapped around a mound of pink paté. "So that's a salmon mousse," he said.

"Want to sample it?"

"Nah, maybe another time. This looks like a good steak." He cut a chunk and chewed it. "It is a good steak. You gotta remember that I like this place."

"You can remember it," Ford said.

"Yeah, but if I don't, remind me." At a somewhat pained look from Ford, Stan put down his knife and fork said patiently, "The school bully was Crampelter, the fat creep. When I was eighteen, I was sweet on Carla McCorkle. When you and me were twelve, we tracked down the Jersey Devil. Mabel and Dipper's birthday is on August 31. The spring after you got pulled into the Portal I started givin' tours through the house at fifteen bucks a throw. See? My memory's coming back. You just gotta help me now and then and let it take its time."

For a few minutes they ate in silence. Then, as the other group paid their tab and left, Ford glanced around. Nobody near. "All right, Stanley, we came here because you wanted to tell me something about our prospective voyage."

"Huh? What are we prospecting for?" Stan asked, all attention. "Could it be . . . gold?"

"In the sense I used the word, 'prospective' means only 'possible.'"

Stan chuckled. "Just pulling your leg, Brainiac. OK, so for more than a week I've been goin' through all the photos and records in my office and in the safe, bit by bit and page by page. Brought back a lot of memories, some of 'em not so hot. But this—" He reached inside his jacket and produced a bulging, rather yellowed envelope, about five by ten inches. "This was sort of a mixed bag. Cousin Vinnie sent it to me—well, it was addressed to you, since on the record I was temporarily dead at that time, 'cause there was this guy named Rico—never mind, tell you later. Vinnie sent some of Mom and Dad's personal stuff, and this envelope, which, see here, has your name on it and "PRIVATE." Vinnie didn't open it. Thing is, there's a bunch of papers here that Ma left to you. To us, I guess."

"What is it?" asked Ford. "Insurance policies or-?"

Stan finished his steak and wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin. He burped. "Man, that was delicious. Nah, it's like family letters that came down from her great-grandpop and her granddad, then our granddad and other people in the family. Before I show one of 'em to you, exactly where are we sailing once you buy the boat you've been lookin' at?"

"A point actually within the Arctic Circle," Ford said. He arranged his salad plate so it was an inch or so from the mousse plate. "This is Alaska, and that is Siberia. Between them is the Bering Strait. Satellite imagery shows that something strange is happening about . . . here." He set the salt shaker down on the tablecloth. "About forty nautical miles north by northwest of Little Diomede Island. International waters, but a trifle closer to the Soviet Union than the United States. I need to take a number of readings with—what's amusing?"

"I may have lost a few marbles out of my bag, Poindexter, but you were away for a long time. There's no Soviet Union these days. It's just Russia, I guess. So are we gonna get captured by the Russians?"

"I should think not," Ford replied. "We'll be disguised as merely a small fishing vessel—our great risk will be in encountering storms and capsizing and such. What happened to the USSR?"

"It dissolved itself, I dunno just when, early nineties. Funny, I kinda-sorta remember that, but not what I was doing at the time, except I must've been running the Shack. Anyhow, what I wanted to ask, and this might or might not be convenient, but I want us to stop at an island named, let me see, остров запустения. I probably didn't say that right, and I got no idea what it means. 'Octopus any creature,' it looks like."

"Let me see that. This is Cyrillic print, Stanley. Russian. It's ostrov zapusteniya. That means desolate island, roughly. Hmm. Have you read this?"

"Do I look like I can read Russian? Nah, but—wait, here comes the check."

Ford paid for the meal, Stan left a tip, and the two of them took the conversation out to the Stanleymobile. Stan sat at the wheel and began again where he had dropped off: "I can't read Russian, but Ma or somebody translated it and typed it out in English, 'cept for the names. The octpob thing wasn't translated in the typescript. Here's the deal, Ford: That letter was written and set in type in 1867 by one of our ancestors. His name was—I don't remember." He glanced at the signature on the letter. "Semyon Somethingovitch Romanov. What's the deal with crazy Russian names, anyway?"

"I'll explain later. Do you remember why this island is important?"

"Yeah, 'cause in 1865, Semyon had got in trouble and was fleeing from Russia with some of the Romanov treasures. He was headin' for a Russian outpost in Alaska where he had contacts, some place called Novo-Arkhangelsk. Only the ship he was on got caught in a storm, like you say might happen to us. Semyon had talked his way onto this supply ship bound for the Novo place, but in the storm they hit a rock and then sank. Most of the crew drowned, but Semyon and one sailor were lucky enough to abandon ship in a small boat, and after a bad night at sea, they landed on that octpob island. They had hardly any food, but Semyon was carryin' a small wood chest with the loot in it."

"Quite a story," Ford said. "I gather there were people on the island?"

"No people, just them. One small freshwater spring, no plants or other food 'cept for crabs and fish and like that. Not much chance of survival, and in the end, the sailor didn't make it, but Semyon got rescued after two months."

"I am supposing," Ford said, "that the Romanov treasures you mentioned—"

"Are prob'ly still on that island," Stan said. "They were in a little chest, jewels and gold and whatnot. The letter sorta hints that the sailor who escaped from the shipwreck with Semyon snuck a look inside the chest and tried to kill Semyon to steal it—crazy, because they were marooned, summer was goin' fast, and soon they'd freeze to death—and Semyon had to, you know, fight the guy to the death."

"Brutal," Ford said. "But probably inevitable in those circumstances. How did Semyon get off the island, and why didn't he take the chest?"

"One day in August Semyon saw a ship within a mile of the island, and he waved a shirt or something until they saw him and sent a boat to check him out. Turned out it was a New England whaling ship. Anyway, the crew picked him up and after nearly two years at sea, they finally sailed all the way to Massachusetts. By that time the Russians had pulled out of Alaska and the poor guy had no way of gettin' back there anyhow. He became Ma's great-great grandpa, and his letter went from his son to his son and so on until Ma inherited it."

"And the treasure chest?"

"After the fight with the sailor, Semyon didn't trust anybody, 'specially Americans, I suppose. Anyhow, he hid the chest at the mouth of a shallow cave, under a mound of rocks. As it turned out, the whaling guys were pretty generous and 'cause he joined the crew and helped work the ship for eighteen or twenty months, they gave him a share of the profits. With that stake, he bought into a printing company in New York. The next year he started a Russian-language newspaper for immigrants, did OK, and even printed up this letter. He got married and, one thing and another, he never went back to Alaska to recover the treasure. We're his descendants, so if you and me can locate this desolate island and find the dough, it's ours."

"I'm not certain of that," Stanford said. "If such a trove indeed exists, it was likely stolen to begin with. I'll have to look up the law, but there's probably some sort of statute of limitations about claiming a recovered treasure."

"Treasure and babes," Stan said. "That's what we planned to go find one day, back when we were teen-agers. We ain't so young now, but I'd say one out of two ain't bad."

"The desolate island may be impossible to fine. Or it may lie in Russian waters."

"May be hard to find, but it's pretty close to the Alaska coast. I got Semyon's estimated latitude and longitude for it. It's 59.7 N, 146.9 W. That help?"

Ford settled back in the passenger seat and murmured, "That should put it south of Anchorage, I think. That seems a pretty rough estimate, but just perhaps . . . I could scan satellite imagery in the area, looking for any small, barren island. Hmm."

As he drove, Stanley grinned at his brother's words. Got his interest. And that means I got him!

The sun set as they headed south toward Gravity Falls. Stan and Ford rode in silence for the last stretch. By the time they parked the Stanleymobile in the Mystery Shack parking lot, night was coming on.

Before making a move to get out of the car, Stan asked, "What kind of statute of limitations are we talking about here?"

"I really don't know, Stanley. Typically it's something like seven years for most things, but something like this—can anyone else show a claim on whatever Semyon left on that island?"

"Well, Ma was like the last of the Romanovs, so who could have any better claim—if we find it?"

"That is the crux of the problem. We'll never find it," Stanford said. "If it was ever really there, there have been storms, earthquakes—it will be gone."

"Yeah, but we can hope. Anyhoo, if we can find out where the island is, we can take a quick look-see after you go and gawk at the anomaly, right?"

In the yellow glow of light spilling out of the Shack, Ford glanced at Stan. His brother's face had shocked Ford weeks before when he'd come out of the Portal because, frankly, Stan had looked ten years older than his twin. Now, though, his features shone with a youthful kind of excitement. Ford recalled the time when the two of them had found a derelict and half-rotten hulk of a wooden sailboat back in Glass Shard Beach. At the moment, Stanley now looked just the way he had way back then.

At last Ford said, "Of course we'll look for it, Stanley. After all, we're the Kings of New Jersey."

"That's my brother," Stan said, grinning from ear to ear.