NB: This work is part of an interconnected series/multichapter of one-shots. Context isn't required and these chapters can be read as standalone works but if you're curious, you can check out the end chapter which explains the premise and the A/Ns. If you're not interested, please enjoy the story freely and don't let me stop you!
Chapter Summary:
Death is a funny thing: strikes when you least expect it, breaks apart your entire world, and, if it misses you and hits someone that makes you wish it didn't miss you, leaves you scrambling like a pet without its owner. Yet it happens every day. So he wonders then: what makes his sorrow more special?
Maybe he could laugh it away? Work it away? Anything it away?
Or do nothing?
He doesn't know.
He's scared. And he doesn't know.
A/N:
EnneaQuote: "The Six is, by far, the 'biggest' type. Many may say it's actually 50% of the human race. Now, what creates that? Is it the insecure childhood? Is it the insecure world that makes people so fear-based? That so many people are filled with fear it's probably a 'peace'? [...] They're naturally humble, naturally teachable. Sixes are faithful, loyal friends and partners."—Fr. Richard Rohr
Author Commentary: Type Six is a great conundrum, more than any other type. Yeah, let's begin with that. They're classified into two distinct variants which deal with the danger in their lives differently. These variants are the phobic and counterphobic Six.
The phobic Six actively seeks to avoid the warning signs of life; where uncertainty exists, they aim to steer clear. On the other hand, the counterphobic Six is more opportunistic, finding problems which their type identifies and aiming to amend them by achieving stability.
Ascribed to be paragons of loyalty, Sixes are people whom you want next to you throughout every undertaking. They gain their sense of worth and love from being there for others and attributing their courage, faith, and determination towards a cause they sometimes deem worthier than themselves. This is exemplified in how they can develop, becoming a benign presence through which the people around them can find safety. In much the same way, the Six can find safety via the foundations they themselves build.
At their essence, Sixes are afraid. In a primal way, this makes sense and explains many of their tendencies. Everyone fears things around them, but Sixes can potentially channel their fear into self-destructive tendencies. Their supreme longing for stability and security can leave them racking their heads at the worst possible scenarios. If they feel secure, they may become terrified of losing that security. If they don't feel secure, they may become terrified of never feeling like that throughout the dissonant world they believe they're trapped in. It is essential that Sixes learn to balance the trepidation they experience by finding their centre through reassurance and self-reinforcement.
As the EnneaQuote mentions, Six is the 'biggest' type. This is also, coincidentally, the 'biggest' story of The Gravity Falls Enneagram. For this reason, this story is separated into two parts, not because it's more special than the others, but because it takes a rather alternative route to representing the type—a route yours truly was invested in portraying authentically.
We will also touch upon some key aspects of the Enneagram equally as important as the wing types and the triads. In this section, we will dissect the levels of development each type can achieve, as well as the concept of integration and disintegration.
Levels of development categorise how 'healthy' anyone pertaining to a type can become. Health, in this instance, is meant to reference a person's adherence to their given type's virtues balanced out with the concept of them becoming a holistic individual and exceeding the framework of their one type. The levels are numbered from one to nine (just like the types!), with level one being considered the healthiest and level nine—the unhealthiest.
These levels are a useful guiding tool for the many sides of a given type and they're also relevant in the next topic we will look at. That is the idea of integration and disintegration.
"When we integrate, it should surprise us. It should be an unexpected reward for doing what is nourishing for our soul—and that wonderful shock of observing the gifts of our integration is the validation of the astonishing grace it is."—Christopher L. Heuertz
As referenced by Mr Heuertz, the process of integration—and therefore its antipode, disintegration—is the steady road to an observable, deserved result for our actions in life. That result is exhibiting another type's behaviour as one adapts to different levels of development in their current type. Therefore, that makes it so that each type also has two other types—one for integration (healthiness) and one for disintegration (unhealthiness).
For example, if one reaches and maintains an above-average level of development, they can begin to shift the good behaviours and tendencies to those of the integration type. Vice-versa: upon reaching and maintaining an unhealthy life, that can lead to becoming more like the disintegration type and adopting their bad traits.
A key difference which should be noted is that integration or disintegration does not necessarily mean 'migration'. Changing with the flow of events doesn't mean a given individual has 'transferred' to another type.
The integration and disintegration types are linked on the Enneagram symbol via the two lines which protrude from any given type and meet at two other types on the figure. Together, these lines all form the Enneagram symbol we've come to know.
Type Six's integration and disintegration types are Nine and Three, respectively. The others, my dear readers, I will leave to your curiosity.
Type Six: Landfall (1/2)
Her last words were… strange.
Not strange in a 'huh, that happened' strange. Uttered with a raspy voice, they carried the type of uncertainty which would've left one lying awake in a chilling sweat years later—after they had believed themselves recovered from the gaping hole left by seeing the final breath be taken.
But why?
Was it because, at the end of her life, when shadows crept up on the interior, she chose not to speak of the injustices she'd been dealt or express the primal inclinations that often overtook many as they came to terms with their mortality? Instead mouthing about what she always wanted to care for and shelter even as the end of her days dawned?
Well, not like that something she held dear was deserving of the affection it'd received. To have heard his own name in the final stretch: what greater punishment was there? Apart from untying the leash of his emotions—oh, but that would've come either way.
He hadn't experienced this before—the passing of a relative. He had no knowledge of the true nature of the Valentino Funeral Home until their services came literally knocking on his doorstep. He had never even visited a graveyard out of circumstance. He'd witnessed only the grim road lined up with cold, jagged rock and the mournful souls which came to pay tribute to those that roamed amongst them no longer.
Some facet of his soul wanted to believe he never had to be in their place.
What a vulnerable perception. His vulnerability was a lone residue of sorrow, soon to be replaced with a slow, scalding fire meant to inflict the most grotesque of scars; scars bound to be covered up with layers upon layers of fabric; scars which could never tell the story of the whole.
He didn't know if the coming months would've been worse than yesterday. There was a certain comfort in knowing that there would be the markings of a static stillness for what was to come. The form his eyes were to gaze upon whenever he thought of her was a constant. Perhaps that same jagged rock—with her name inscribed—lined up alongside the outskirts of the cemetery: it too would have proven a substitute to the good memories... one day.
Not many flowers decorated the premises. Sans those set out for the initial ceremony, the small number of townsfolk which had heard about what happened came to pay their respects and their bouquets added to the arrangement.
They were still few in number.
There were a few of her favourites—tulips. Every day when he went to school, there would be a vase of tulips sitting by the kitchen window overlooking the garden. He didn't know how but the smell of those tulips was unlike any other he'd smelt in flower shops. Many hours were spent searching for the same specific tulips for a sunny birthday or, well, a sunny Mother's Day.
Yet now the rain, void of faces he wanted to see, was pouring down on a dreary midnight. These tulips were not like the ones past—sogging in the darkness, vibrancy ebbing away.
Sleep was impossible. How could he have relished another world's comforts when the one which held the pillars of security collapsed in on itself? It was why he was here now, at this late an hour.
At least it wasn't the ICU. Not a place he was fond of. Monotonous white wasn't a colour anyone should've been cursed to see when they closed their eyes. Slow, mechanical beeping—the grating reminder a heartbeat was fading away without deserved dignity—was not a sound one should've heard with pillows wrapped around ears.
Pillows. She never forgot to kiss the stack of pillows which rested on his bed as she wished him a good night's rest. He had no idea why exactly she kissed the pillows, of all things. An old tradition to ward off dark spirits of the night? Or a distraction to make him feel better—to help him brave the times when his father hadn't been there?
It could've been none of those. Intent didn't matter. Rather, how much he took the simplest acts for granted: of being able to look upon her face from the faint, golden glow of the night lamp; of being able to feel her holding his hand as a bedtime story exited her lips; of spotting the creased smile with each back turn as he skipped across the backyard the next morning.
He stroked his arm, the one which held the umbrella.
He was forcing his eyes yet he couldn't cry. Why? It felt like a disservice to her—a testament that he didn't care enough. Had he already spent his energy in the initial hours? Were the arms of doctors desperately trying to pull him away all that it took? Or was there nothing from the beginning—no way to show the one now watching from above that, indeed, he loved them more than he could've possibly ever said?
He could not shed tears. Too much was on his mind. No 'blackness' which he wished to have plagued his heart impeded the desire to reach out. It was a more harrowing state—nothingness. Darkness implied a possible vestige of light. His was a lack of anything. A null.
If there was anything he wished for more than to free himself now, it was to be in her presence. Not forever as selfishness had him desire, but for mere minutes.
What a vulnerable perception. He chuckled.
Reality snapped at him, assuring that wouldn't happen.
Mariana, his Abuelita, would have found her way to heaven, like she'd always promised him.
Soos just hoped he could find the trail back to earth and see what purpose there was left in living.
Soos' pickup truck came to a sudden halt. The view from the vehicle's windows was obscured by condensation from damp, nightly air. He didn't think such weather—such a blur—was possible at two AM during the middle of April.
The Mystery Shack had become his barrier, like a stronghold meant to guard the people he treasured and the safety net he had worked to build for so long. Mariana had come to see the run-down tourist attraction as something more significant, too. In spite of that, the small house on 32 Chambrot Drive was where the Ramirez family's heart forever resided—his most important stop.
It was quite a foolish place to store one's heart, for it was a vacant residence. And without the new addition to the Ramirez—Melody, his wife, who was away to visit family—Soos wished he hadn't been sick and bedridden the day he wished his love safe travels as she went to catch the bus to Portland. He wished it so he could've come with her; so he didn't have to worry her with his little flu; so they could have rushed back to Gravity Falls when his Abuelita needed them and, if they couldn't have saved her together, that when the time came, he at least didn't have to be all alone.
Soos sighed. Melody deserved a break from him. He couldn't have made her suffer, too.
Without much effort, he slouched out of the car. He tottered over the steps of the porch, stumbling and knocking over one of the garden gnomes laid out at the front door.
He bent to reposition it. Even now, he couldn't have bothered to be more careful. The least he could've done was leave the house as it were.
Soos' grip tightened over the gold-coloured knob, as if lying to himself that he didn't already know what was beyond the oak door.
"Here we go," he whispered to himself and turned his hand.
Soos was inside. Cell phone light didn't need to tell him where the light switch was—instinct was enough. As he hung his wet coat on a nearby rack, his eyes fixated on… too much.
The living room was surprisingly clean. Well, Mariana had wandered towards the house from time to time with the presumed intent to keep it fresh and neat, but the frequency of her visits lessened as events spiralled.
Nevertheless, the image was nearly spotless and void of detail. It was a blur once more, albeit of his own doing.
With the grace of an unfocused business owner, he strolled past the bordeaux drapes to his left. The place was quiet, his heavy footsteps and the rain outside becoming the single sources of sound. Soos wanted to lie to himself and say he had no idea where he was going and that he was meandering like he usually did. He wanted to continue shrugging off the details—the beige apron strewn over the sofa—which he couldn't bear to glance back at.
He'd have to deal with this room another time.
Soos reached the stairway and climbed over the creaky stairs, recalling when the previous staff of the Mystery Shack—his closest friends—had temporarily resided here the past year. He had no clue how everything could've changed in such a short timeframe. It made him wish they could've gone back to surviving by the whimsical chaos of a town-wide apocalypse.
But that was impossible. The paranormal backdrop of his life would always chase after him, yet centre stage was now taken by a play of bitter sorrows.
He found himself on the second floor and thereafter his Abueltia's bedroom. Her room was a quaint slice of the house. Even before walking in, he was keen on it being filled to the brim with memorabilia from a different time—mementos he yearned to ignore again. In fake detachment, he had to try and get the process of clearing out the house underway.
It took him a long time of sifting through drawers, desks, and beds to find items he didn't need and didn't want to preserve. Clothing, old instruments, makeup—they weren't of any interest and could've been handled separately.
His search continued to be in vain until he stumbled upon an unusual particularity. A book. A crimson diary, stuck in the middle section of the small, nearly empty bookcase Mariana had mounted up on the wall next to her bed. Unlike his grandmother, Soos had never been much of an independent reader and in the times he spent as a child picking out books from her collection to use in building book towers, he had never seen one with such a distinct colour for its cover.
Soos rubbed his eyes. Had his heart ached so much that he clung to anything? Believed any explanation which would've brought him peace of mind?
Not thinking much, Soos reached and pulled the diary out and opened it, hoping he would've been forgiven had he intruded on tender ground.
Inside the cover was a picture taped haphazardly to the corners of the book.
It was of him and Mariana, a long time ago. Back then, he was five years old and had insisted on riding a high-speed roller coaster in an amusement park out of town. Against her wishes and better judgement, she'd acquiesced and joined Soos. And this was a moment during that ride caught in still nirvana—Soos and his Abuelita screaming whilst holding on to safety rails; two people fusing the world for each other in joy and heartache.
He turned to page one, immediately noting how it was written in Spanish and in Mariana's handwriting. It was some assurance that Soos was one of the few people in Gravity Falls who could've read it with some confidence.
Two sentences were enough for him to discover what this diary's purpose was. Mariana had laid out the notable moments of her life with Soos, page after page. She had always been fond of transforming Soos' life into her own soap opera, but he didn't know it went on to such a degree. Mariana wrote of his small but meaningful birthdays, of her spite towards Soos' absentee father, of the many sacrifices she'd made to ease Soos' struggles in school, of the pride she'd felt when he began working in the shack—everything.
Soos' blood ran cold once he realised she'd wanted him to find this two-hundred-page dossier.
He skimmed over the rest of the entries in around ten minutes, finding a distant appreciation of the events described but not the courage to try and connect with those which included him. Some of what was mentioned surprised him, like Mariana's distaste for Soos' deceased grandfather and the existence of a sister of hers who lived in Italy. Soos wanted to contact this relative but Mariana detailed she hadn't spoken to her in decades and that she hadn't a clue of her real whereabouts.
After everything, there were three pages from the diary which remained to be read. Those three pages were different, though. The ink was far fresher and the date on the corner signified there could've been only one significant event left to be detailed in the writings.
Soos' eyes began to feel misty. He wasn't consumed by the need to read through it. He knew his grandmother well—too well, perhaps. Even when he did turn the page just to witness the final straw…
God, it hurt.
She didn't shroud anyone from the narrative. These last entries began as if she were talking to someone—to Soos. Until the end, Mariana kept her orderly handwriting and benign, grandmotherly tone, even if she didn't use many words to express that. Until the end, she had loved Soos in spite of how much he'd let her down.
His terrifying proof of those claims: the same final words he'd heard whispered in the hospital dictated where the closing period for this entire diary lay.
Soos did not let restraint catch up. He hurtled the book across the bedroom.
A vase was knocked down, shattering on the old parquet.
"Why'd you have to go…" Soos murmured out. He squeezed his eyes. "What am I gonna do without you?!"
He clutched his head—tried to tear out the hairs on his scalp, scream his lungs out, and bite his lip until the rupture bled away all his blood.
Yet he couldn't cry.
He sat cross-legged for a while, ignoring the mess he'd caused. He didn't do much of anything, feeling as though his mind were paused.
Eventually, he turned to his wristwatch. Three AM already.
Soos put the diary in his cargo shorts' pocket and, for a second, tried to force the appropriate response. Even though the desire to stay here and do more proved to compel his heart, his eyes were closing fast from exhaustion and he knew he had to get some sleep.
A long Monday in the Mystery Shack was ahead of him.
A quarter past seven. Half-past seven. A quarter to eight.
The clock never waited. It did not care for the countless times Soos had immediately clamoured out of bed and started a fresh day with a smile. Him having woken up from his three and a half hours of 'sleep' and having watched the ceiling for twenty whole minutes changed nothing in regards to the flow of time.
Mounting pressure was one of many reasons which convinced Soos to arise from lethargy, pretending being guided by fear was normal. He brushed his teeth with off-brand toothpaste, got dressed in the outfit he no longer felt quite worthy of donning, and aligned the new props for the tour.
Soos averted his gaze from the notes-turned-tour-script set out on the empty kitchen table, lying to himself he couldn't rehearse his lines because of time constraints prior to opening hours.
He was a horrible liar, especially in his own conscience, since he still took the tour materials with him. Soos read them as he made his way to the front entrance, but the words did not jump out and charm him like on better days; they were too difficult to piece together. He begrudgingly set the script aside and flipped the worn-out, haphazardly hung sign which signified the gift shop was open for customers.
Soos waited behind the door to the front entrance. He tried reaching for the script for the umpteenth time, but apprehension steadied his hand. The pit in his stomach shouted at him to do something—anything—to ward off his thoughts until customers came to the shack.
He aimed to set up the cash register since he'd be manning alone after Wendy went off on a road trip with her family. 'Supervised semi-normalcy training' was the Corduroys' new yearly venture in place of apocalypse preparation—preparation which Soos believed had paid off when he saw Wendy with Dipper in tow during the initial days of Weirdmageddon.
He counted the bills to make sure there was sufficient change left in the register. Soos sighed when he saw way too many quarters missing inside but he remembered he'd used some on the vending machine to pay for snacks. Though he was technically now the owner of the shack and he had already known a way to get free snacks, old habits were hard to silence.
Soos added one, two, three quarters, and his eyes began closing a quarter per second. Before he was well aware, he sat down and put his head on the table—for a very, very quick nap, of course.
"Yo, statue man!"
Soos' eyepatch nearly fell from the force he shot up with.
Big tour groups had a knack for catching him at the worst times.
The impromptu tour went about as well as Soos expected.
Well, at first, it was fine. A handful of Stan's oldest attractions amazed rows of onlookers. That was the reason why the dust they'd built up hadn't been the reason to boot them from the museum, as their home was anywhere but the dump.
However, he encountered a small problem when one of the abrasive tourists touched the grey silk curtains near the museum exit. Soos had forgotten to take them down—those drapes were from back home. Suffice it to say, no one took well to Soos' reaction upon connecting the dots.
Then, the moosephant exhibit came—an attraction lined up with some of the other animal fusions. With Soos having ignored the part of the script explaining the portmanteau's meaning, he was stumped. He became subject to a variety of questions by a scrawny teenage boy with a strange accent and a stern woman who appeared to be the leader of the whole group. Soos could unsurprisingly tell of the latter's occupation via the sign reading, 'Group Guide' which hung from her neck all the way down to her waist.
But he was not affected by the woman's ramblings. Not as much as the boy whose questions carried a curiosity identical to Dipper's whenever Soos had shown him and Mabel something new about the shack. Although from there stemmed a lapse of what was like blissful nostalgia to Soos, parts of the moosephant's cardboard body falling out didn't sustain that feeling for long.
Where the situation went south was at the specifics—or lack thereof—regarding the 1966 Gator-Baiter rifle. This exhibit which Soos had crafted did not light up anyone's eyes, mainly per some technicalities regarding the usefulness of a rifle against alligators in an Oregon town.
From there, one complaint led to another and next thing he knew, refunds were handed out and the shack was empty.
He turned to the two items he had brought with himself at the registry counter and which he couldn't resist glancing back-and-forth to: the excerpt bookmarked at the final three pages in the diary and a faded black-and-white photograph of Mariana he had embedded in a silver frame a few years back.
While the first batch of people from the group had been leaving the museum and the next one had come flooding in, impulse led him to reread fragments from the diary and pick up the photo to… stare at it.
And feeling something akin to respite, the substanceless reminiscence revealed itself as but a ploy. Perhaps moderation was the elusive answer? Had to be. The fact remained that more tourists would have arrived soon and he couldn't have allowed the events of the past hour to repeat themselves.
He closed the diary and averted his gaze from the picture, deciding to stock up a shelf with an old shipment of sixteen bobblehead props of the original Mr Mystery.
Having ordered the first couple of trinkets, Soos began grabbing many in one hand, trying to speed the process up. One of them had a stand which was quite wobbly to the touch—it turned out not all Namm Co. bobbleheads were good for balance.
"You look like you could use a hand," a youthful voice said.
Soos raised his arms, knocking down the box of bobbleheads and tripping on one which had fallen out of the container. He tumbled down and landed on his bottom, thankfully causing a small amount of collateral damage. Such was the plight of the easily frightened; whenever he was distracted from something he'd been doing and especially when he didn't know who was behind him, the butterfly effect kicked in.
"Oh dammit," the voice continued, allowing Soos to realise he'd already heard this specific rough timbre and intonation before. It belonged to the boy who had inquired about the moosephant; the boy who reminded Soos of Dipper. "Probably shouldn't have snuck in like that."
Soos locked eyes with the lone shopper who watched with mouth open as if he wasn't the odd one here. Soos wasn't sure how to respond to the situation. Perhaps, neither was the one before him.
Whatever the case, the kid appeared to snap out of it and was already picking up the bobbleheads.
In spite of confusion hanging over like shellshock, Soos got a better look at the teen. Pale white skin and curly maroon hair with a fade on the sides stuck out with how the boy barely towered above the seated Soos. It led the handyman to believe he was around the twins' age—at most a year older. Soos based his slither of doubt on the presence of the tiniest amounts of facial hair around the boy's chin.
"Didn't think you'd fall down like that," the kid said, extending a hand as the two made eye contact for the second time. "Don't worry, I can relate."
Soos grabbed it with his own, larger hand. He honed on those dark, round amber eyes, believing they could've held many a thought in check. Coupled with an expression that was way too relaxed and a mien which was not a frequent marker of sincerity, this boy continued to intensify his befuddlement. He was always willing to give the benefit of the doubt, yet… there was something off about it all.
Just as Soos got back up on his feet, the final bobblehead was placed back in the box.
"Uh, i-it's okay, dood," he uttered. "I guess you already saw what went down in the tour? You must've hated it, too."
Soos was all over the place. This was the first time he had spoken with a person outside of a tour in days.
The young man laughed, crossing his arms over his small orange hoodie with two long white stripes along the sleeves. "I actually kinda liked it. Dunno why those other guys had a problem, but… it was charming, I guess."
Soos could infer from the boy's accent that he wasn't from anywhere near here. Though he couldn't pin it down, he made a mental note to ask someone like Pacifica about it next time he went to Greasy's since he'd heard she'd known a decent number of languages.
"Wow, thanks." Soos was putting on his most enthusiastic voice. It wasn't very enthusiastic. "Didn't really expect to hear anything like that but I'm glad you liked it, dood. Er, what's your name?"
The boy's eyes slightly widened and he rubbed his arms with laden uncertainty, as if he hadn't expected that question.
"Bojidar Lavoie," he quickly answered, his hands sinking into his loose-fitting, long black trousers fit for the colder than usual spring Gravity Falls was experiencing. He leant on the counter and lifted his arms up. "Yeah, I know, I'm not from here. Obviously. A janitor called me Boji once, though, so I guess that works."
Soos tittered. "That's an interesting and, uh, cool name, Boji. I'm Soos. Um, Ramirez."
"Well that's an interesting and cool name, too," Boji acknowledged, a playful irony bleeding throughout his words. "I've been around and I can say you've made it to my big imaginary leaderboard of the weirder names out there."
"You're kidding," Soos said. He crossed his arms. "Where do I rank, dood?"
"Let's say high." Boji winked. "Higher than mine, of course. But I'll keep you in Soos-pense where exactly."
"Heh, nice one." Soos found such terse play on words weirdly fascinating, like the ones Dipper had made a couple of times whenever they gathered to solve a mystery. He scratched his head under his hat. "Uh, sorry if this sounds kinda weird, but why didn't you leave with the others?"
Boji bit his lower lip before saying, "Those guys? Nah, I didn't know them. Wasn't even part of their group. I came by 'cause my dad told me to find something to do while he went out for errands." In a matter of seconds, his brows furrowed and then went back to a neutral orientation. "But hey, I get the memo. Since the show was cool and all, I was thinking of probably buying some of this neat stuff here. Oh well, guess I'll be gone by—"
"No, wait, I'm sorry—"
"The money caught your ear?" Boji asked, smirking. Before Soos had time to respond or grasp Boji's meaning, his conceit loosened and he gestured casually in the air. "I'm joking. I can tell you didn't mean any of that."
He didn't answer, fidgeting before remembering he had to put the rest of the bobbleheads back on the shelf. He took yet another one, relying on not being surprised from behind again.
"So do you have stuff apart from the shop and the attractions?" Boji inquired as he took to browsing the greeting card stand next to Soos. "Not that I'm saying anything. Seems hard to manage just that all alone."
"Uh, just that for now." Soos had a soft spot for the curious and didn't mind answering questions. "Usually, things move faster but my friend's on vacation and Melody—she's my wife—she's, erm, out, too. But for a while. I-I mean, it's not—"
"I get it." Bojidar put his hands up as if to steady Soos' explanation. "Not my business. But if you don't mind me asking, I was kinda curious about—"
There was a sound. An intensely brutal and inhuman scream outside which immediately caused Soos and Boji to reach out and cover their ears. Soos felt dazed from the slight rumbling which was felt throughout the floorboards, making a couple of uncoordinated steps backwards. From the corner of his eye, he saw Boji was struggling to stay upright.
"What's going on?" Boji yelped. "Earthquake?!"
"I dunno!" Soos heard the intense rustling of paper and a loud thud in the background. He assumed the greetings cards section of the shop was going out of commission.
A fleeting moment of stillness hung over the gift shop, only to be succeeded by more violent shifts.
Soos sprinted ahead, dodging spilt containers of pet rocks and lipstick gadgets armed with gunpowder.
"Hold on to something!" he shouted at Boji as the Singin' Salmon mini-attraction fell wildly against his forearm, causing him to seethe in pain.
He let out a low roar, coping with the pain and focusing on the statue of Stan which had, in its intact glory, toppled over and nearly blocked the exit. Soos galloped over it, bursting through the front door and toppling over at the stairs on the front porch after failing to land on his hands.
He gazed up. And up, until his neck couldn't stretch further and his eyes couldn't become wider.
There morphed a black, grotesque being with a structure nearly matching that of a human. As tall as the first floor of the Mystery Shack, it bore a half-smile and half-frown on each side of its nearly featureless face, styling its mouth into a sharp, twisted twinblade. The eyes were a demented grey peering through him, this fledgling of nature.
Soos had seen the weirdness of the Falls, but this was entirely different. It was akin to a more demented and imposing version of the Summerween Trickster. But unlike the spectre of cheap candy, parts of this entity's body were falling out and regrowing, its form appearing almost ephemeral and a cause for the pitch-black residue left on the grass nearby.
At the twilight of the gaunt monstrosity's imposition, it cast a giant shadow over the shack's entrance, and Soos stood frozen in the corner of light escaping between its tall legs.
"No!" he yelled out as he came to realise what the creature was actually doing. "The totem pole!"
"What?!" Boji's voice came from behind him. "Oh my God… is that thing trying to rip out—"
"Stop!" Soos reached out, trying to see if it could be reasoned with. The black essence wholly shapeshifted out of its previous state and further spread itself around the Mystery Shack's totem pole. "Let go!"
When Soos saw words were useless, he dashed towards the creature.
"Hey, wait!" Boji said, his quick steps echoing in Soos' ears.
The creature spread out for a third time and encased the entirety of the pole. Soos was certain of that since his vision was darkening, a result of being sucked in the void's grasp after his hands had clasped parts of the wooden pillar's lower sections. In sifting through a pool made up of a substance similar in texture to jelly, outside light offered Soos a clarity from which he could witness the compounds of this cage.
There was… so much momentum and vigour.
And between it all, he could spot a boundless ebony heart which throbbed wildly rather than beat with life.
"C'mon!" The grunts broke through Soos' ears the same time he felt a tremendous pull on his leg and was sent backwards, hitting the ground.
Hearing the cacophony of crunching sounds and hisses—dirt tracks being formed—Soos cried, "No! Come back!"
He got up and waddled about, trying his best not to throw up. There was, thankfully, a wooden pillar on the porch which offered him support. The veil over his vision began lifting, yet the object in the centre of his clarity became continuously smaller and smaller.
Once he could see without issue, it was gone for good.
"What the hell was that?!" Boji shouted, breaking the silence which had pervaded Soos' recuperance. "I've never seen anything like it! Could barely pull you outta—"
Soos had no time to chat. This was serious. Seriously bad. His hands shaking, he jogged back to the shack.
"Soos?" the lilting voice continued after him. "Hello?!"
His heart banging in long dissonance and willing to drop like a kite with tears trying to stay afloat, the worst realisation came crashing upon Soos' mind: there were only two men in the world who could help him.
Laptop. He needed to get to it. It was below the fourth row of the closet in his bedroom. Or maybe thrown on the desk somewhere in the office?
"Not there," Soos said to himself, realising what he was gunning was already in the hands of the ones he'd be contacting. He turned around and aimed for plan B: tablet in the living room.
He dove towards the electronic device resting on the armchair, his fingers barely hitting the video calling app after several tries. The call rang for a couple of seconds and then connected. Never had Soos been more thankful that Dipper and Mabel had taught those two how computers worked.
"Heya, Soos!" The boisterous ring of Stan's voice surrounded the room as the choppy video feed turned on. He was sitting on the sofa they'd brought up on the boat. "What's the word up in—"
"Not now, please!" Soos said, ignoring that Stan was partly covered in some weird yellow substance from what was probably another adventure of his and Ford's. "Something really bad just happened!"
"Did the gnomes get in the basement again? Look, I told that guy—"
"No, worse! It's"—Soos paused, realising there was no way to phrase the reality of the situation in a way which would soften the blow—"Ugh, Mr. Pines, the totem pole got stolen!"
"Sweet Sarsaparilla!" Stan's eyes were wide. "How? You okay?"
"I'm fine! T-The thing was some kinda monster or demon! Just came outta nowhere—wrapped itself around it a-and took it!"
"What did it look like, Soos?" Ford, with his composed yet demanding inflections, asked off-screen. He came into frame, behind Stan. "I need a description so I can cross-reference it with my notes!"
"Notes?" Stan said, moving their conferencing device around the Stan'O-War II. "Didn't we throw the journals in the Bottomless Pit?"
"I left spare manuscripts on the dangerous creatures still left in Gravity Falls," Ford replied, shuffling through something somewhere in the background. Stan quickly rolled his eyes. "But that doesn't matter now! Soos: info!"
"U-Uh, okay," Soos stuttered, getting his otherwise frantic thoughts together. "So, it was like a big black goo monster that, uh, sorta looked like a person but could, like, split apart! I think it was smiling? O-Or it had a half-smile." Soos ran a hand over his head. "I don't know!"
"Soos!" Stan said. "It's a'ight. Calm down."
"Half-smile…" Ford trailed off. "Oh no."
"What, Poindexter?" Stan said. "You gonna tell us what and how we're gonna"—Ford rustled the video feed while getting to whatever part of the boat was behind the camera—"Woah!"
"It's the Shadowspawn!" Ford said. "It's been freed!"
"The what?!" Soos exclaimed.
Stan left his post as camera coordinator as well, shouting, "Hey, brainiac! Slow down!"
"I can't believe it," Ford muttered, coming back into the camera's purview with a duffel bag. He and Stan were back on the sofa, Ford already digging through the bag. "Damn my pity. This is one of the first monsters Cipher revealed to me when I first met him. I have no clue how it might have come back given I'd sealed—"
"Okay, okay!" Soos interrupted, strained from the lack of concrete and useful information coming from Ford. He sat on the armchair in the living room. "What do I do?"
"I'm searching for the manuscripts now!" Ford assured, rubbing one of his eyes with the underside of his left palm. "This beast—this creature—was both very weak and managed to leave me with the biggest questions of my research." More shuffling sounds. Until a stained yellow parchment showed up. "A riddle."
"Riddle?" Soos' eyes felt heavy. What had he gotten himself into?
Ford harrumphed, adjusting the parchment in his sightlines. "'Walk a path burnt on every side by the light of lampposts standing upon yesteryear's tragedy and paved by the landslide of consequences from a fool's gambit—such is my hunger'. Terribly pseudo-poetic. Before I went into the portal, I looked into the Gravity Falls press for clues about this 'tragedy' and after many dead ends, one issue of a newspaper stood out." He put two fingers to his temple. "But I'm sorry, I don't remember where I kept it…"
"That still doesn't tell me how to find it!" Soos exclaimed. He was losing time.
"I know," Ford said, turning towards various containers around their room. "Okay, I believe I had some other dossiers on the Shadowspawn left around—"
"Cool, you keep searchin' your science bag or whatever," Stan interjected as Soos started to become even more fidgety, his leg jumping up and down. "About that newspaper: I remember several'a them like that being inside a file in the back of the trapdoor. Soos, y'know where the—"
Stan was cutting off, static starting to take over. It was of little significance, for the moment Soos heard about the trapdoor, he was on the hunt to get it open. Good thing he'd bumped into Stan when he was storing away extra cash from a tour two years ago.
"Hey, what's going on?" another voice piped up from behind Soos.
Having immediately recognised to whom it belonged, Soos turned around.
Boji was holding something and looked at Soos as if he'd fallen straight from one of Ford's dimensions. He asked, "Are you okay, man? Take a breather!"
Soos did the exact opposite and held his breath, trying to swallow his dizziness. Couldn't this kid just leave him alone, at least now? He dismissed his internal grovelling and opened the trapdoor in front of Boji, his hand scraping through and managing to grab a file which contained a newspaper.
"'Local man finds sea urchin walking next to grandparent'," Soos read out loud. Useless heading. He moved through the rest. "'Northwests fund construction of anti-curse rod—breaks down a day later; injures technician'. W-What does that have to do with anything?"
"Found it!" Ford uttered through the deteriorating audio. "43° 35' 56.4'' N, 123° 44' 16.8'' W!"
Soos bit his lip; exactly what he needed: coordinates without anywhere to write them down.
"We"—even more interference in the signal, with the video shutting down completely now—"going into a storm, Soos! Just use these coordinates!" Garbled noise replaced almost all sounds. Ford's voice was barely audible. "You have to follow the shadow residue"—another cut—"weakness should be the riddle—distract it and you can use yourself to pierce the hea—"
"No!" Soos cried. They couldn't have left him now. "Please, repeat the coordinates! Hello? Anyone?"
It was pointless. Both the call disconnected and the tablet's battery ran dry. From an error popup to a pitch black screen, any discernible outside help Soos could've counted on was lost. Before his body could no longer keep up with the intense panting, he heard a daring plea from Boji being extended to him—a plea for Soos to hold on and stay conscious as he was being dangled over the black recesses of his paranoia.
He couldn't. He blacked out.
"Hey," someone called out. "Hey, wake up!"
"Uh," Soos mumbled, part of the blurriness subsiding as weak sunlight hit his face from outside the open back door. "Man, where's the infinite slice of pizza when you need it…"
"What?"
Soos shot up, his eyes widening as he the one who was speaking to him was not a figment of his imagination but his most recent customer. "Wait, was all of that a dream just now?!" He pinched his arm and snapped his gaze to Bojidar. "Did you buy that thing you were gonna buy? Did a giant—"
"Hey, relax!" Boji said, sitting on his knees nearby. "Whaddya mean a dream? That happened! This frigging monster came and took your thing and—"
Boji put his hands up front, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. He extended his hand.
Soos blinked, noticing Boji was offering a water bottle he had been holding since Soos had woken up.
"Oh…" Soos grabbed his head. "You're still here, dawg?"
Boji shrugged. "I had no idea if you were gonna jump off a cliff or something after seeing that, so I tailed after you."
"I-I know," Soos muttered, taking the offered drink from Boji's hand. "Wait, that thing's not here now, right?"
"From what I saw. I think this place should be okay now." He huffed. "And here I thought I was the one seeing things. You don't sound like you have a great handle on what's going on."
Soos thought of listening more intently to Boji's words to get at what exactly he was saying to him, but he hadn't the energy left. "Huh. I just realised this was my first time passing out at work."
He gulped down almost the entire water bottle and let out a frail laugh.
"So what?" Boji said. "Aren't you, like, the boss of this place?"
"Doesn't really matter, dood. It's any reliable employee's duty to be up and runnin'. Plus, I liked bein' the reliable one. Thought I was good at it, ya know?"
"Guess I can respect a guy for sticking to his principles."
Soos stared blankly at the back door.
"Hey, everyone flakes once or twice. Doesn't mean you're not a reliable person." Boji twiddled his thumbs while Soos drank the last drops of water and got up. "I guess if you were reliable for everyone, then you wouldn't be that much of a 'person' anymore. You wouldn't have time to be reliable for yourself."
He found a weird comfort in the one-third which he understood of Boji's weird musings, but pressed on with walking towards the back door.
"Wait, where are you going? Don't tell me…"
Soos couldn't gulp away an explanation after Boji—prodding nature notwithstanding—had looked out for him without being asked.
"Get yourself somethin' from the gift shop, dood. On the house, as thanks." He stopped. "I'm gonna go get that totem pole back."
"Seriously? Why risk it? I'd get outta here if I were you." A momentary silence—perhaps in anticipation of a response. "But… you look like you've been here a while, so I guess it isn't easy."
"Look, dood, I'm not forcing ya to do anything. That pole is really important to this place—to me." Soos clenched his fists. "It's my duty to get it back."
"Okay, we both saw what that thing can do. What I didn't see is where it ran off to."
Soos sighed. He hadn't thought that far ahead.
"But you know who found this random screenplay lying around near your register and scribbled down the stuff your weird pal said on the back?"
It took Soos hearing such a provocative revelation for him to look over his shoulder.
"Really?"
Boji shrugged. "Riddle and coordinates both."
"Wait," Soos conceded. "Can you show me what'cha wrote down?"
Boji nodded, handing the back of the second page of Soos' tour script. Boji's handwriting was a lot more refined than his accent, but Soos didn't judge him on any of those fronts. He had no care for qualifiers like that.
"Right, so there's the coordinates and that weird riddle." He pointed out which was which to Soos. "Riddle's paraphrased, of course."
"Para-what?"
"Same thing, different words." Boji's hand reached for a rugged paper on the olive-coloured armchair. "That guy of yours also mentioned a newspaper that has some, um, weird articles."
"Oh. I dug that up, dood. It wasn't really helfpul."
"Well, I don't think he'd have talked about it if it was useless." Boji gave the newspaper to Soos. "Then again, I don't know him at all."
Soos put a finger to his chin while skimming through the clue. "Yeah, he wouldn't say somethin' if he didn't know what he was talking about."
"The newspaper's dated 1983, so it's plenty old. There's an interesting part about an 'anti-curse rod'. Think that creature could be linked to that?"
"I dunno. Hard to really say."
"Figures. Look, there's also this at the bottom." Boji tapped upon the point of interest. "'Arson or accident? Detective Connor continues investigation into disappearance of Caleb Williams, local fireworks enthusiast—prime suspect for burning down house with his wife and child inside.'"
Soos froze for a split second, internalising the grim repercussions of the quote. It wasn't like any outlet for the Gravity Falls press to be so pessimistic. Something was very off.
"It's almost like it's been made less noticeable by the other news," Boji reaffirmed. "This must be that 'tragedy' your guy talked about."
Soos reread the riddle. "You could be right. Or maybe it's just a coincidence."
"Wouldn't be one to know."
Scanning the newspaper further, Soos fixated on the very bottom where the page number was supposed to be. Therein, like an old injury reappearing to wreak havoc on one's ageing body, he glanced at a crude drawing of the insignia tied to a certain secret society he thought he'd never hear about again.
"I… think I know why this newspaper is so strange," Soos said.
"Why?"
"This." He showed the bottom to Boji. "No newspaper has a symbol like this instead of a number."
"You're right. That is really weird. Any idea what it is?"
Soos took a deep breath, his eyes narrowing. He wondered if he should've questioned McGucket or tried to find Blind Ivan for any further leads on the newspaper. Those ideas were quickly supplanted as he reminded himself of the aftermath of The Blind Eye. Following last year, all of its members—sans one who'd suffered most from the effects of the memory gun—had the existence of The Blind Eye wiped from their minds.
"That everything you could find?" Soos asked, dodging Boji's question. He wasn't ready to explain all he knew yet.
"Uh… pretty much."
Boji's face was veering towards an expression endowed with a tinge of apparent distrust. His answer meant the same route was left for Soos to take.
"Good. Thanks," Soos said, looking at the back of the script for the final time and making sure he'd memorised the coordinates. They were what mattered, not any dead ends to The Blind Eye. He got up. "Since I don't want anyone like you to get dragged in, I'll go sort this out."
"Wait, what?" Boji asked, clearly confused as Soos brushed past the door frame of the living room. "After what I did to help you, you're just gonna go and deal with that on your own? C'mon, I can come with you!"
"I really don't think that's a good idea, man." It was getting hard for Soos to go back on his decisions to answer Boji's concerns. "I appreciate the help, but—"
"You kidding?" Boji stood up and crossed his arms. "I mean, okay, forget about how I saved your butt with that info. Not important. But you can trust I've got something to gain from all this, too. I… I actually moved into this town a week ago—and I know I don't look it, but I like not getting eaten by shadow monsters. Or 'Shadowspawn', whatever's the name."
Now Soos was at the receiving end of the surprises. Much like Dipper, this kid was good at offering explanations which could catch people unprepared while also erasing question marks in their heads. Being a regular tourist was one thing, but having been here for at least a week, Boji might have known more about the mysteries of the Falls than he'd led on.
At the image of failing someone from his own lapses in judgement, Soos could feel fear tingling upon his arm. Yet beneath the glint of exhausted sunlight passing over Boji's amber eyes, he found a reason to think twice.
"You've really been here a week already?" Soos questioned. "You know how this place is and you still wanna come?"
Boji coated his nod in fiery determination and, for the first time, appeared to have revealed his full hand.
Soos gulped, recollections biting at him more and more. Part of him wanted to chuckle at that; how could he let this burden of sentimentality be the rusty yet steady compass to rely on because of some faint, distant sensation of warmth?
"Okay, I… you can come," he stammered out. "But you need to keep your eyes out for danger. That thing looked to be real dangerous."
"I get it," he said. "I'll be on the lookout."
Soos wasn't dissuaded from his qualms after hearing that, but he was less keen on turning his back on his decision.
"And, uh, thanks for checkin' in on me back there, dood," Soos mentioned, Boji's gaze following him as he trudged over to the aquarium next to the living room table. "Do you mind doin' me a favor, though?"
"Depends on the favor."
Soos dug through the drawers below the aquarium and uncovered a GPS device in which to input the coordinates. Good thing most of the stuff in the shack was where it'd always been. He snagged his packed toolbelt from the antenna on the TV it'd hung on and put the GPS in one of its holsters.
"Try not to tell your parents about this," Soos said, gathering the papers Boji had shown him and also stuffing them inside a pocket of his toolbelt.
"Oh. Yup." Boji's voice rose at the second word. "Lips are sealed."
"Alright, then."
Together, they exited the shack and started following the shadow residue left by the Shadowspawn.
A/N: Enneacipher in the next part for the curious minds :)