The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel
(August 14, 2016)
11: Sunday Morning Coming Down
From the Journals of Dipper Pines: Sunday, August 14: We warned Mabel and Teek not to let anyone else leave the Shack until Wendy and I had reconnoitered. She saluted and said she wouldn't. But Abuelita won't let her bring Widdles and Waddles inside, so they're parked on the Museum porch, snoozing. I hope they stay there.
Tripper is antsy this morning, as if he senses something's not right, but he didn't try to grab us and keep us from going out, and he didn't beg to come along, though he loves car rides. Tomorrow he gets his cone off, finally. It may just be that it's bothering him. I really hope that's all it is.
Anyhow, I got to drive Helen Wheels for a change, and Wendy and I were at the Sprawl-Mart the second it opened. She went straight to the Automotive section. She browsed for less than half a minute, then said, "Perfect. Let's go, Dip!" We went to the register and she paid twenty-odd dollars for the little device.
As we started back to the Shack, I turned downtown and went around the block where the Skull Fracture is—a long block, because it shades into the junkyard that for years was Fiddleford's home. Wendy didn't say anything. She knew why I was detouring. I pulled into the lot and said, "Hey—there's the pink motorcycle!"
It was laying on its side, not far from the back door. "Don't get out, Dipper," Wendy said, her voice tense. "I don't trust it."
"I agree," I said. I rolled down the window. "Something feels—not right. Do you get that, too?"
"Kinda, yeah," she said. "Sort of like the heavy air before a big storm breaks."
"Wish I'd brought my anomaly detector."
"Wait until Ford gets back," Wendy advised.
"OK. Let's go." I backed out, went the rest of the way around the block, and made the left turn for the main street, and then at the end another left and a right to head for the Shack.
I felt strange—I can't explain it. OK, maybe I can at least describe it. When I got my electric guitar, I had a chance to plug into a really high-powered, high-end amp once that a friend of Mabel's has in his folks' garage. He hooked up and said, "OK, try a couple chords."
I was going to do an E-minor, C riff—about the most basic, and one of the first chord combos I'd ever learned. I shredded the E-minor and almost wet my pants. I mean, the guy had cranked the volume up to eleven! And I was right in front of this humongous amp. It felt like my bones and guts were vibrating. He got a big laugh out of it.
But that's kind of the way I felt driving away from the Skull Fracture and toward the Shack—strung too tight, quivering inside, knowing that something was gonna happen but not what or when. "Ancient Mariner time," I told Wendy.
"What's that? The poem by, was it, William Blake?"
"Coleridge," I told her. "Yeah, the part where the old sailor is talking about how all the dead came to life and worked the ship and he was standing looking ahead to see where they were going. And suddenly he's terrified to look back." I recited the stanza for her:
"Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread."
"You're giving me goosebumps," she muttered. "Hey, if your books ever come out as audio, you oughta read them in that voice, man. Scary."
"That's because I'm scared," I told her.
Before 9:30, my girl had changed out the fuse—she actually melted the old one over a gas burner for a few seconds. "Dad's gonna want proof," she explained. She stuck the old one in the blister pack the new one had come in.
Dan and her brothers showed up not many minutes later in Wendy's Dart. "Got it fixed?" he asked.
"Yeah." She handed him the old battery fuse. "This blew, so she wasn't takin' a charge. I borrowed Soos's battery charger, so it ought to be OK to go now. Try it."
They exchanged keys, and Dan got the pickup engine revving. "I shoulda checked," he said, leaning out the driver's window. "The truck's nearly five years old. Things go wrong."
"It's cool," Wendy said. "We were here when it went out of commission, and I kinda figured that was the problem, so I checked, and bingo, there it was. Hey, you owe me twenty-three bucks for that." She grinned. "No charge for labor!"
"I'll settle up later," he said. "Sure you don't want to go visit Steve?"
"Nuh-uh," she said firmly. "He always wants to pinch my bottom."
"He's just teasing," Dan said. "But, yeah, I get it. OK, we'll prob'ly be gone until eight, nine tonight, so your lunch and dinner are on you."
He and the boys pulled out, and Wendy took my hand. Our touch-telepathy cut in at once.
I'm glad to see 'em getting safe out of the Valley, Dip.
—I know what you mean. OK, let's see when Stan wants to leave.
The answer to that was "Right now!" Mabel and Teek were getting ready for Mass—Teek's folks had brought over his sport jacket, a white shirt, tie, and proper shoes, and Mabel was wearing a short-sleeved black dress ("My LBD!" she told Wendy), with a lacy white crocheted cardigan and—courtesy of Abuelita—a lacy black mantilla. "Do I look appropriate?"
"You look fine," Teek, in blue trousers, white shirt, and light-blue sports jacket said with a smile.
"A niña muy modesta," Abuelita said, twitching the sweater a little. "That means you are dress' very appropriate for church."
Wendy and Dipper left the Ramirezes, Teek, and Mabel preparing to leave for Mass, while they walked downhill to Stan and Sheila's house. Stan was already in the driveway, behind the wheel of his brother's classic Lincoln. "Come on, come on," he said. "You made me late enough as it is."
They got into the spacious front seat with him, he backed out and turned, and then they rolled through town. "Somethin's gettin' my neck hairs prickly," he muttered.
"Same here," Dipper said. He was in the middle, Wendy riding shotgun. "I don't think this is nearly over yet."
"Yeah, well, let my brother do his magical mumbo-jumbo and shoot it with an accelotron or atomizer or whatever," Stan said. "Hope traffic ain't too slow."
Traffic was really fairly good—Sunday morning, after all—but at about eleven-forty, Ford called, Stan's phone trilled, and Stan, still at the wheel, said, "Fish that outa my coat pocket and answer it, Dip. Five'll get you ten it's Poindexter."
Dipper didn't take the bet, and it was just as well. Ford said, "Stanley! We've just reclaimed our baggage. Are you at the airport?"
Dipper put the phone on speaker and said, "Grunkle Ford, this is Dipper. Stan's driving. We're probably fifteen or twenty minutes from you right now. We'll be there soon."
"That's just as well," Ford said. "Lorena and I want to, um, freshen up. We'll meet you at the passenger pick-up. We'll be standing at the curb."
"I think I can recognize your ugly face, Brainiac," Stan said.
"It's sort of your face, too, Stanley," Ford said with dignity.
"Yeah, I knew there was some reason I hate to shave in the mornings!" Stan shot back. "Hey, I'm drivin' your car, so you keep an eye out for us, too. Dip and Wendy are with me. I figured they can fill you in on this deal and I'll drive us back."
"That's a good suggestion," Ford said.
"'Course it is! I made it, didn't I? See you in about fifteen, Sixer."
That was just about two minutes too optimistic, but not many minutes past noon they joined the queue of cars moving slowly past the baggage-claim area. "I see them," Wendy said. "Third exit there."
Stan found an opening, neared the curb, and they jumped out to help Ford and Lorena stow their bags in the trunk. "You guys get in the back seat," Wendy said. "Dip, you ride with them. I'll stay up front. Dipper will tell you all about this mess, and Stan and I will chime in if we need to."
Ford and Lorena looked a bit haggard—it was a long flight from D.C., and Ford said they'd had to be at the airport at four-thirty that morning for a six-a.m. flight. And then they'd had to change planes in Chicago, where there was a layover.
"I'm sorry about that," growled Stan. "But there's some kinda haunty thing hangin' out in the men's room of the Skull Fracture. I mean worse than the usual customers, too. Tell 'em, Dip."
Dipper went through the story. Ford asked him about the anomaly-detector readings, and when Dipper had gone through them, Ford pondered for a few minutes. At last he said, "It sounds like a vengeance ghost to me. The malevolence, the sense of foreboding you mention—did that track?"
"It didn't register as a normal ghost at all," Dipper said. He shrugged. "I know that sounds kinda crazy, but you know what I mean. It was more like—I don't know. It had intelligence, but it was more like a focused sense of anger and resentment. I think it meant to do us harm."
Half-turned in the front seat, Wendy said, "Tell 'em about the motorbike."
"What motorbike?" Stan asked. They had not yet brought him up to speed, figuring if they had, they'd only have to tell the story twice.
"It's gotta be connected," Dipper said. "OK, we noticed this pink motorcycle parked out behind the Skull Fracture—"
"Pink?" Stan asked. "Wait a minute, Tats mentioned that. That idiot motorcycle gang, Satin's Angles—"
Ford interrupted. "Stanley, I think that should be Satan's—"
"Yeah, should be, but it ain't," Stan said firmly. "Bunch of knuckleheads from around Bend. They caused a ruckus in the bar yesterday and Tats tossed 'em out on their butts. 'Scuse me, Lorena. One of 'em left his motorcycle out front, and Tats moved it to the lot, figurin' they'd come back for it. What about the motorcycle, Dip?"
Dipper told the story of the riderless bike that had buzzed both him and Wendy in her dad's truck and Teek and Mabel in Teek's car.
"No rider," Ford said thoughtfully. "That's suggestive. It might mean the apparition is striving to develop a physical presence."
"How would it do that?" Lorena asked. Dipper noticed that she and his uncle were holding hands.
Ford adjusted his glasses. "Well, in this instance, the entity might possess the motorbike. Might cause it to operate without an actual rider. Because if it's a haunting spirit, it's probably confined to its locale—the bar and the building it's in, say. But it can project a force to control things like the motorcycle. Odd, though, normally for that to happen, the spirit, the entity, should have a connection to the machine it controls. I don't suppose this ghost could possibly be a member of the gang you mentioned, could it?"
"Don't see how," Stan said. "None of the Satin's Angles have died in the place."
"Well," Ford said, "as soon as we arrive, I'll go to my lab in the Mystery Shack and pick up some more sensitive detectors, and then we'll see if we can isolate and identify the source of the disturbance. We should be safe in broad daylight. If not, I'll bring an array of countermeasures. Also, I'll provide us both with protective devices—"
"Us, too," Wendy said.
Dipper nodded. "I think we have to go, Grunkle Ford. Whatever that thing is, I've got a bad feeling that it's focused on us. Me and Mabel, I mean. And Wendy."
"I'll think about that," Ford said, looking troubled. "The only thing is—" he broke off. "I'll think about it."
Dipper said seriously, "I know it might be dangerous, because 'an unfocused spirit of rage is one of the most terrible of ghostly apparitions.' Your Journal 4, the addenda on ghosts and hauntings."
"Yes," Ford said unhappily. "I recognized my own words. However, I don't want to talk about that, not now. Not," he said, squeezing Lorena's hand, "until we know what we're up against."
"And when we do," Lorena said, "then we'll kick its ass. "Excuse me, Stanley."
Stan barked out a loud laugh. "Poindexter," he said, "you are a very lucky guy!"