Wanderers from the Weird Side

(August 15, 2017)

6: Et Meurt par Rencontre

Four wet ovals still faintly showed on the porch when Ford brought his equipment up to the Shack. He clicked through every setting on his anomaly detector, his expression growing more and more frustrated. "Whatever is causing the disturbances," he said at last, "I can say categorically, it isn't ghosts. I can't find any trace of chronosphere disruption, either, which argues against time travel."

"Nothing, huh?" Wendy asked.

"Not nothing," Ford said. "But hardly enough to be called something."

"Open for business," Soos called from the gift shop. "No customers yet, though, dawgs."

"Thank you!" Mabel shouted. She, Wendy, and Dipper sat at the table with Ford. She said in a quieter voice, "If it's not nothing and it's not even something, what the heck is it? I can tell that Wendy and Dipper are really, really bothered about this. It's gotta have a name!"

"I'm sorry," Ford said. "I can detect some faint disturbance, but it's neither fish nor fowl. That is to say, it's like some small vibration in reality that's . . . off. Not quite in tune with the rest of the universe."

"What's it most like?" asked Dipper.

Ford smiled. "I like the way you think, Mason. A bit like Occam's Razor—cut away what it can't be, and you're left with what it might be. Well, let me see." He took out his pocket notebook and began to scribble in it. Dipper, sitting next to him, could see the column of words he wrote in his neat handwriting. It began

SPIRITS AND APPARITIONS

Ghosts, ancient

Ghosts, recent

Apparitions of the living

Crisis apparitions

Deathbed apparitions—

—and went on from there. The next page started with TELEPORTATION AND TIME DISPLACEMENT. Ford took ten of the small pages in all, and then he went back over the lists, placing an X beside everything that the anomaly detector had ruled out.

He wasn't left with much. Tulpas, Unfocused poltergeist-like events, Material memory visions, and a few others. "None of these are likely," he said, compiling a new list of possibilities. "The detector can't exclude them, though. And it may be something else. On the bright side, I've never heard of any of these things killing a person. However, some of them have been known to drive the percipient mad. The rain's stopping. Is there any chance of our visiting the site of the first event?"

"It'll take a couple of hours," Wendy said. "And Dipper and me are supposed to be at work."

"Soos!" Ford called. "A little favor?"

Dipper suggested approaching Ghost Falls from the south instead of from the north. "It means we have to hike through the geyser field," he said, "and it's a longer drive to begin with but I think the walking distance is shorter."

"Worth a shot," Wendy said. "Only thing, we'd have to cross over two streams, and they're both kinda far down in gorges they've cut. That will slow us down."

"Let's take the normal route," Ford said. "I suspect we'll actually save time by not having to bridge crevasses."

They borrowed Soos's Jeep and drove off-road for a mile or so, shortening the hiking distance. Then, unburdened by backpacks or camping gear, they made good time through the dripping forest. Ford, who kept himself in good condition, easily paced them, from time to time commenting on bits of the natural world that caught his attention: "Scotch broom. That's an invasive species."

"I'll report it to the Forestry Service," Wendy said. "Never noticed it."

"Probably brought in by a bird vector," Ford said.

They came out on the lightly forested rolling hills, and Ford said, "Oh, I know where we're heading. Stanley explored a cave, looking for gold near here."

"Ghost Falls, yeah," Dipper said. "That over there isn't a river, it's—"

"A beaver pond, I know," Ford told him. "It's a very old one. I surmise it once was much larger but the majority of it has silted in—that's the marshy area that borders the water."

"Yeah, now and then a torrential rain comes along and scours it out again," Wendy said. "Washes away the dam, and the beavers start all over again."

They leaped across the small creeks that fed into the southern edge of the beaver pond, then came close to the hot spring in its overhanging semi-cave. Wendy stopped them and looked around. "We were right around here, weren't we, Dipper?"

"I think we were" he said. He took her hand and led her a little way from Ford. "Here?"

"Yeah, and I had my back toward the bluff. You stand right there. I was like this and I saw whatever it was over your shoulder. So it was—right over there, Dr. P. Twenty, thirty yards away."

"Tell me where I'm near the spot." With his anomaly detector out Ford stalked the location the way a hunter might stalk a timid animal.

Wendy said, "Stop! OK, right in front of you, or real close to there."

Again, Ford turned on his anomaly detector and patiently clicked through all the settings. He moved a few steps, made an eighth of a turn, and then forward a little. "Must have been here," he said. "There's still a disturbance. But it's not classifiable. Another of those vague readings."

The meter showed the reading dropping off very rapidly—they seemed to be confined to a spot only about three feet in diameter. "Well," Ford said, "something was here—something that either had a physical or a quasi-physical existence. Unfortunately, it left only a trace. Now the only living things around aren't sentient—just the usual assortment of small rodents, bugs, and worms."

"We don't know that the thing Wendy saw was sentient either," Dipper pointed out.

"Wendy shook her head. "No, I got a feeling there was some kind of intelligence there," she said. "I mean, the doppelgänger didn't do much. Just stood looking at us and then raised her hand the way I showed you, her expression sort of pleading. And then she was gone."

"That suggests," Ford said, "that the manifestation might have had only a weak force behind it, one that could not hold onto a physical reality for very long."

They poked around for a few more minutes and Ford made a few photos of the site, but then they headed back. "We owe Soos something for this," Wendy said.

"We'll do overtime cleaning," Dipper suggested.

They talked very little on the walk back to the Jeep. Again, though the rain had passed through and ended, the tall forest trees dripped on them. Now and then a shaft of morning sunlight slanted in through the canopy, though, and the twittering songs of sparrows and towhees rose from all around them. Wendy could identify them, though to Dipper they sounded almost alike. Once she made them stop for a moment. "Hear that? It's a lazuli bunting, not common around here. Beautiful blue bird."

However, it was still only a bird, nothing paranormal, so after a couple of minutes they resumed their walking.

The Jeep had been left in a small open patch of ground among the tall trees, and they saw its metal and glass gleaming a little to the right. They veered toward it. As they came close, Dipper saw that the windows had fogged from the dampness in the air. And then he said, "Hey—look at the driver's side window!"

Someone or something had left a message for them.

Back in the Shack, Dipper and Wendy had to get busy at once, and not in a happy way—an unexpected double busload of tourists had rolled in, and Wendy hastily changed from hiking shoes to the flats she wore as Manager of the Mystery Shack. Dipper slipped onto the stool at one of the two registers, getting a "Whoo-ee, am I glad to see you!" from Gideon, who was manning the other register, a line of about ten customers shuffling and murmuring as they waited to check out.

Dipper checked his cash drawer and then said, "Ma'am, I can take you and the four folks behind you. That'll speed things along."

Though with the passing of the summer the references to the Ghost Harassers web show had become sparse, they cropped up again—Dipper assumed that the segment had been cycled in again recently. "Is this the place where that ghost of a wizard haunts a closet? Can we see it?"

Soos had in fact transformed a broom closet in the Museum into the "HAUNTED CLOSET OF MYSTERY," and so far, no tourist had spotted that it wasn't the same closet featured in the online video. Dipper told them they could certainly go take a look at the closet, but warned them, "Don't expect to see a ghost. It's more often heard than seen."

Around noon the crush ebbed a little—many of the incoming tourists went to the snack bar for lunch—and Dipper told Gideon to take his break. Ulva, who had been bustling around keeping the shelves tidy and occasionally posing with tourists—she had no qualms about confiding, "I am a friendly werewolf!" and was so cute that lots of visitors, especially grumpy teen boys who usually wandered around complaining to their parents, "This is stupid!" loved to take selfies with her. Anyway, she and Gideon went to the staff room for their lunch.

Wendy, a little frazzled, asked Dipper how he was holding up. "OK," he said. "This is the way it's gonna run right up until the end of the month!"

"Ford says he wants to see us down in the lab when we get a chance. Break in twenty minutes?"

"That'll be good. Maybe we can catch a time to use the secret door while Soos takes the next crowd out on the Mystery Trail."

"I'll arrange with Teek to make us a couple of sandwiches. Roast beef?"

"Sounds good. Oh—have him make one for Grunkle Ford, too."

"Right. OK, time for another Museum tour in two minutes, so let me run and put in the order and then I'll bring another bunch in."

Gideon and Ulva returned at 12:30, when only a few tourists were browsing in the gift shop. Then at 12:37, carrying a bag with the sandwiches, chips, and drinks, Dipper and Wendy ducked downstairs and found Ford on the first level of the labs. "Here you are," he said. "I think I've deciphered the drawing."

He dimmed the lights and put a photo up on the largest computer monitor.

At first it looked almost abstract—a gray field with a few blotchy, muted colors—and on it a darker figure, drippy, as though a finger had sketched it in the fog on the Jeep window—which, to all appearances, was the case.

It showed a circle, somewhat flattened top to bottom, that was incomplete. The whole thing, as Dipper remembered, was about a foot in diameter, but on the right side it was broken for perhaps an inch. To the right of the break, an arrow had been drawn—focusing the viewer's attention not on the circle, but on the small void.

Drops of water had dripped down here and there, leaving little crooked dark trails through the mist on the glass.

"Does it remind you of anything?" Ford asked as he unwrapped his sandwich.

"Kind of like a broken-circle tattoo," Wendy said. "There's a parlor over in Portland that sort of specializes in them—they look like they were drawn by a brush and in ink, not like a regular tat."

"That would most likely be an ensō," Ford said.

"What's that?" Dipper asked.

Ford made a thoughtful little "Hmm" sound. "It's a Zen representation," he said. "It's an aid to meditation. The term is Japanese, and the figure is drawn with a brush, as in traditional Japanese calligraphy. It must be done very quickly, in one fluid movement. The circle may be closed or open. If open, it represents paradoxical ideas simultaneously. On the one hand, it is the idea of potential perfection, but also the notion that imperfection and transience are a source of beauty-wabi-sabi, a world view that incorporates imperfection, lack of permanence, and incompleteness as part of the human condition and a source of inspiration and beauty."

"Oh, I thought it was just a tattoo thing," Wendy said.

"No, it's also something to focus on while meditating," Ford said. "However, this is not that."

Sometimes Dipper got a little impatient with Ford's tendency to take a sidetrack off the train of thought. "Then what is it?" he asked.

"Let me superimpose a photograph and you'll see," Ford said. He tapped the keyboard, and a photo faded in behind the shape sketched in the mist. Dipper recognized it as a satellite picture of—

"Gravity Falls!" he said.

"North is at the top, as usual in maps," Ford said. "I resized the photo to match the glyph."

The fit was perfect. The circle sketched in haze exactly overlaid the cliffs surrounding the Valley. And the break was the one spot where the Valley opened to the outside world—the place beneath the broken cliffs that still bore the impact shape of the ancient crashing spacecraft, the spot beneath the now-replaced old mining railway trestle had once stood.

"Somebody's telling us that we'll find the answer there," Wendy said. "Right at the entrance to the Valley."

"I suggest we go there this evening, after you're off work," Ford said. "You'd better eat and return to your jobs now. I'll prepare for an expedition to that spot later. I've never heard of a legend that the place is haunted, but just to be save, all three of us will be armed."

"Five," Dipper said. "Teek and Mabel will have to come along, too."

"What? I was trying to protect Mabel from distress," Ford said. "I don't think it's necessary that she accompany us—do you?"

"Yes," Dipper said. "I know Teek will want to come along too, but Mabel has to be there. That's necessary. It absolutely is."