Chapter 2 – The Only Game in Town
There was gunfire nearby. The mysterious twelve-fingered man grunted and ducked into the bushes.
Before Dipper and Mabel could move, another man came out of the jungle, a hunter dressed in khakis, wearing a pith helmet. He carried an old-fashioned blunderbuss.
"Thank you for saving us," Mabel blurted out, more in hope than in certainty.
The man looked at them coldly, and spoke in the accent of an aristocrat. "My name is Van Northwest. Follow me. Do not speak."
With no better options available, they followed. Van Northwest cut the way through entangling jungle vines with complete confidence.
As they crossed a river on what looked like large stepping-stones, one of the "stones" turned out to be a hippopotamus when Dipper stepped on it. It bellowed and tried to throw Dipper off, as he desperately clung to its back.
Van Northwest fired his gun once into the air, and the hippo froze in fear. Dipper got across.
It was a long walk to Van Northwest's hunting lodge on a hill. When the arrived, they found a few monkeys had raided the place in the hunter's absence. They had dragged out an assortment of old crossbows, spears, and other weapons and were playing with them.
"Outrageous!" Van Northwest shouted. "Riff-raff! Begone, blast you!"
He fired at the monkeys, who scampered away into the jungle, screeching. A monkey got away with one of the crossbows.
They entered the lodge, which was richly decorated but with an odor of decay. The walls were full of trophy heads. Dipper noticed what he hoped were fake trophies of human heads mounted alongside elephants, water buffalo, and tigers.
Dipper and Mabel stood side by side in front of a large fireplace.
"Now you may speak," said Van Northwest. "Tell me who you are, and why you were in the middle of the jungle, speaking to that flea-bitten cur."
"I'm Mabel, and this is my brother, Dipper. We were just playing a game," said Mabel.
"A game, you say?"
"The Gravmanji game," said Dipper. "We rolled the dice, and a clue came up..."
"And then here we were," said Mabel.
"A clue? How interesting," said Van Northwest. "What was it?"
"I forget," said Mabel.
"How could you forget! It may be important," said Dipper. "Clear as ice, but worth the price."
"What makes you a master of the game, all of a sudden?" asked Mabel. "You don't know any more about this than I do."
"At least I memorized the clue," said Dipper.
"The Crystal Mask. An artifact of great value..." muttered Van Northwest to himself. He re-loaded his gun as Dipper and Mabel squabbled.
"I didn't see you saving us out there in the jungle. I'll take Mr. Van Northwest as my game partner from here on," said Mabel.
"Mabel, this isn't really happening," said Dipper. "This is all in our imaginations, or something. It has to be. It's just a game."
Van Northwest pointed his gun at them, and snarled, "Gravmanji is not a game!"
Arms reached down from inside the fireplace and grabbed Dipper and Mabel out of the way of the shotgun blast. The twelve-fingered man was hanging onto a vine with his legs. He helped them grab onto the vine and they all scrambled out onto the roof.
Below, Van Northwest fired up at the roof, making large holes near their feet.
Their rescuer pulled a crossbow from his back and fired at Van Northwest through the hole. The bolt went through the hunter and pinned him to the ground.
"Come on," said their rescuer.
They leaped down into the building through a hole and ran out the door, scattering the monkeys that had gathered again outside.
They ran, finally stopping in a clearing to catch their breaths.
"My name's Ford. Talk to me. Who are you, and how did you get here?" asked the twelve-fingered man.
Dipper was cautious after the way talking with the last stranger had turned out, and decided to lie. "I'm Clyde, and this is my sister, Bonnie. We're twins."
"I can understand parents giving twins matching names, but calling you after a famous pair of criminals? That's worse than what happened with me and my brother," said Ford.
"You killed Van Northwest," said Dipper.
"I doubt it," said Ford. "He's almost impossible to kill."
"If... if we said that Gravmanji is a game, would you get mad and hurt us?" Mabel asked.
Dipper winced.
"It's the only game in town," said Ford with a wry grin. "Come on, rest break's over."
They walked through a grove of plant that looked something like Audrey II from "Little Shop of Horrors."
"Since you're new here, let me fill you in on a couple of facts," said Ford. "One, Van Northwest is a horrible, dangerous villain. Two, I am a stalwart hero and an all-around classy guy."
He paused to free Dipper from one of the carniverous plants which had snapped him up.
"Yech," said Dipper, wiping off purple slime.
"The night-blooming ones aren't so bad," said Ford. "The daytime ones are poisonous."
They crossed a narrow rope bridge above a river.
"Stick close to me and you should be all right, in theory," said Ford. "I just make it minute by minute myself."
"Is there anything in this place that doesn't try to kill you?" Dipper asked.
The vines holding the bridge together came alive and snaked around them, and plant mouths snapped at them.
"Nope," said Ford.
With effort Ford tore them loose. "I hope you can swim," he said as he cut the bridge with a knife.
They plummeted down into the river, and then went over a waterfall. Finally they reached the shore.
"Did we have to do that?" Mabel asked.
"If you go all the way across the bridge, you're attacked by panthers. If you try to swim the river, there are crocodiles. Halfway across and down the falls is the only way."
"So things reset and repeat, like a video game?" asked Dipper.
"Yes, but don't be lulled into complacency by that. There are new threats all the time."
They came to a steep hill, and Ford had them step into a large basket, which he pulled up by hand.
"Where are we going?" asked Mabel.
"I'm taking you home," said Ford.
"Is this how we get home?" Mabel asked Dipper.
Dipper shrugged. "Anything is possible."
They reached a cave in the mountain, with "Ford's Lair – Keep Out" written on the ceiling.
"Here we are, home sweet home," said Ford.
The twins looked crestfallen.
"I know it isn't the Ritz, but it's something," said Ford.
"This place is cool!" said Mabel, making the best of things. "Look, toys!"
She picked up a toy truck and a baseball glove from the cave floor.
"Don't just grab stuff," said Dipper. "Ford, how long have you been here?"
"Thirty years, less a month or so," said Ford. "Those toys aren't mine. They came from other kids who played the game. They didn't exactly... survive. It's a tough neighborhood."
"Oh," said Mabel. She dropped the toys.
"Couldn't you solve your clue and end your turn?" asked Dipper.
"Clue? What are you talking about?" asked Ford.
"That's how it works, at least I hope so. There's a clue to solve to end the turn. I hope ending the turn means we get to go home," said Dipper.
"I never saw a clue," said Ford. "I was distracted. I never intended to play at all."
"What happened?" asked Mabel.
"I was a researcher. I found the Gravmanji game, and I realized it had immense power. I had it in my laboratory, studying it for insights into the experimental dimensional portal I was creating. I had just realized that my portal was dangerously unstable, so I called my two research assistants to come and help me shut it off. There was a fail-safe with three keys so no one person could shut it down alone. I wrote some last notes in my journals, then I jumped up from the desk. I knocked over the game by accident and the dice rolled. That's when I got pulled into the game. When my assistants arrived, they must have thought I got sucked into the Portal, and shut it off. Eventually the game ended up wherever you found it."
"It wasn't in any laboratory," said Mabel. "It was in the attic of our house."
"What was your clue?" asked Ford. "Maybe I can help you solve it and we can all go back to the real world together."
"Clear as ice, but worth the price," said Dipper.
"Aha! I know what that is!" said Ford. "Follow me!"