Grim Falls Ch. 3 "What are you doing in my room?"

Billy stood on the gravel surface of the parking lot and watched Dipper's car turn out into the road and disappear. The grim reaper glided silently to Billy's side, but Billy knew he was there.

"Good game, right?" Billy offered.

Grim's skull scowled back at him. "I wasn't watchin' the game, stupid." Grim said as he jabbed Billy in the back of the head with the end of his scythe.

Billy rubbed the back of his head and straightened his baseball cap. He smiled, "No?"

"No," Grim intoned, "We're here ta' keep an eye on Mandy." He looked down at Billy expecting him to acknowledge this fact.

Instead, Billy just responded with, "Why?"

Grim slapped his forehead with a hollow 'thunk.' "And she calls me bonehead." Grim grumbled.

Billy was silent for a few moments, wearing a confused smile on his face.

"We're makin' sure she don't do anyting stupid," Grim groaned.

Billy shook his head. "No, no, Mandy doesn't do stupid things."

Grim scowled at the boy. "Maybe she didn't before, but now?"

Billy looks down with a strange expression."Grim?" he asked.

"What?" grim answered.

"Why can't she see me?" Billy asked.

"She don't want to. And you ain't old enough." Grim answered.

"Huh?" Billy asked.

"Look," grim sighed, "Spirits don't usually get enough power to manifest until they been dead a good long while. Especially not if they died slowly." he explained.

Billy screwed up his face, "And what about... her not wanting to?" he asked.

"Well Billy," Grim said slowly, "I tink she was angry at the both of us for what happened. I don't think she's in the mood to talk to either of us."

Billy pondered this. "I guess not." he concluded.

Grim put a skeletal hand within his own cloak and rummaged around, muttering to himself. Billy spoke up again.

"Grim?" he asked once more.

Grim stopped rummaging, "What?" he snapped.

Billy looked up at him, "Why didn't I move on?"

Grim's expression turns to one of guilt. "Do you really want to?" Grim asked hesitantly.

Billy shook his head slowly, "Not while Mandy's still mad at me."

Grim looked a bit relieved. "She was always mad at you." the reaper protests.

Billy shook his head again. "Not like this."

Grim nodded in agreement. "I suppose not." He finally found what he had been looking for, and fished crumpled brochure from the recesses of his dark cloak. He thrust it into Billy's Hands.

"Ooh, what's that?" Billy studied the brochure intently.

"It's where the boy lives." Grim explained.

Billy just looked confused again. "What boy?"

Grim ground his teeth together. "The one Mandy took off with!"

Billy cocked his head. "Oh."

Grim rolled his eyes sockets. "Do I really need to explain this one to you?" Grim asked.

Billy treated him to a rare scowl. "No, I get it. I just don't get why you care."

Grim sputtered at the statement. "You should care too!" Grim snaps, "She's outta her mind with grief and now she's runnin' of into the woods with some teenager!"

Billy chuckled. "I think she can take him."

Grim's eyes caught fire. "Dat's not the point!"

Billy sighed. "You want me to follow her?"

"No." grim insisted. "You just follow the map on dat brochure and hide out in the kid's house in case I lose track a' dem."

Billy shrugged and floated into the air, emitting a soft blue light. "Have fun with your stalking." Billy waves and leaves Grim alone in the empty lot.

The boy flew away from the sound of the shouting reaper and relished the felling as the wind goes literally through his hair. He smiled and looked down at the forest below. The trees soon gave way to streets and houses, which the boy compared with the diagram on the back of the Mystery Shack brochure. It took him quite a while, as he wasn't quite sure which direction was north, or even that north was a direction. The wind carried his incorporeal form through the night sky and finally towards the Mystery Shack.

He flew in circles, slowing his descent (which wasn't really necessary, but was really fun) and glided down to sit on the peak of the mystery shack roof. He looks at the surrounding area and takes in the scenery. He sees a few lawn chairs on the roof below him, and he floats down into one of them. He sighs as he reclines on the chair, staring out past the totem pole and into the forest. Billy would have become lost in thought, but he didn't really have enough thoughts to get lost in. He eventually became bored, and sank down through the chair and into the Shack.

Three men sat at a card table in a darkened gift shop. Billy studied them each in turn. The oldest was a man in a stained wife beater and a pair of striped boxers. His chin was crusted with gray stubble and he wore a fez over a pair of thick glasses. The Largest was a man in an enormous green question mark t-shirt and a pair of khaki cargo shorts. His crooked teeth stick out over his lip when he smiled, and he referred to both of the others as 'Mr. Pines'. The final man at the card table was tall and thin. His hair was brown and curly, and his glasses are almost as thick as the old man's. He wore a goatee, and his eyes were wide and hollow.

"Don't change the subject, Uncle Stan. do you think we're just not gonna discuss your two aces of spades?" the third man said, in a tone that Billy realized was only jokingly furious.

"Just lucky I guess." the older man replied, though even Billy knew enough not to believe that.

"It might be true, ya' know." the larger man defended, "I think if Mr. Pines weren't so lucky, he'd have had to close down the shack a long time ago."

The thin man shook his head, "Soos, the only reason the shack hasn't closed down yet is because you let my uncle work you so hard."

The larger man chuckled, "If you say so, Mr. Pines."

The older man cleared his throat, "We gonna play or what?"

"Only if you stop cheating." insisted the thinner man.

"It's force of habit." The older man insisted in return. "If I don't cheat, your daughter'll take every last cent."

Billy wasn't really able to follow the thread of the conversation. He floated so that he was mere inches behind the thin man. The man shivered, but didn't look back. The man coughed and slipped a card out of his sleeve. Billy smirked and shook his head. He set his feet down on the oaken floorboards, though he could never really touch them, and strolled towards the stairs. Billy grabbed the banister and hopped onto it. He grinned and floated upwards, pretending to slide the wrong way along the banister. He floated off the railing and came to a door with a hand-written sign that read "Mabel and Dipper's room, and underneath that, "party zone."

Billy waved his hand and the doorknob rotated swiftly. The door drifted open with a quiet creaking noise. The ghost floated through the gap, though that was not strictly necessary. He turned around in a circle, surveying the twins' bedroom. The beds would have been identical, but for the belongings piled on them. The bed to Billy's right was covered in blankets and yarn and various knitted articles of clothing. The one on the left was covered in papers and books. There was a fair amount of dirty laundry on the left side of the room, and a fair few posters on the right. The posters and the clothes were both exploding out of their sides of the room and into the other. Regardless of which half of the room you looked at, you would always find strange and supernatural knickknacks.

Billy sighed and floated over to the yarn covered bed. He settled into the pile, though he only pretended to rest on top of it. He closed his eyes and got comfortable. He would have scratched his nose, or readjusted himself, but neither of those was necessary. As a ghost, Billy could feel no discomfort. He sighed again and began staring at the ceiling. He hummed loudly for a few minutes, and no one told him to stop. He was bored again.

Just as Billy rose into the air again, he heard the sound of a car door closing. Billy glided over to the window and looked out at the car in the parking lot. A teenager climbed out of the car. It wasn't Mandy, or the boy she was with, it was someone else. She was a tall girl with long, wavy, brown hair and a wide grin. She wore a green and orange sweater and a pair of patched blue jeans. Billy floated away from the glass, only vaguely interested. He would have floated down to get a better look at her, but he felt he needed to stay where he could keep watch for Mandy.

Billy floated upright in the center of the room, looking around and trying to find something to keep him occupied. He heard a fourth voice added to the conversation downstairs, and Billy could control himself no longer. He floated towards the gap in the door and got ready to eavesdrop when he caught a glint of gold out of the corner of his eye. Shininess holding more interest to him than conversation, Billy flew quickly over to the closet where he had seen the flash. On the closet floor, wrapped in an old hooded sweatshirt, there was a tied bundle of three old leather books.

Billy wouldn't have been interested, but he felt a presence within them as he felt when Grim was nearby. These books are powerful, he thought, and important. Billy extended his hand toward the bundle and the brown cord untied itself skillfully. The first book was marked with a golden six-fingered hand and a painted number three. Billy floated the book up into his hands and retreated into the center of the room. His eyes glowed with a bright blue light as the pages flipped rapidly in a phantom wind. They stopped at a page about ghosts. Billy leaned his head forwards and read the page over his nose.

Through careful study and secretive research, it read, I have determined several facts about ghosts. Their power is directly related to the length of their time as a spirit. Their ability to lift and manipulate objects starts within human limits and increases rapidly over the next several decades. They become able to influence the minds of the living and to consume the energy of other spectral organisms, thereby increasing their power further. Billy paused. He wondered genuinely what kind of ghost would eat another just to become a better poltergeist. He shook his head and continued reading. A ghost is bound to this world by its own willpower. The deceased ultimately makes the decision for itself as to what exactly their unfinished business is and when and if it is ever finished. Unlike in literature and classical ghost stories, the ghost is wholly in control of whether or not it moves on from this world. Billy stopped reading again. He hadn't known that. Did that mean he could move on if he really wanted to? He flicked his eyes down the page and read another line. There are a few exceptions, as the ghosts of the mentally ill aren't always aware enough to control this process. Billy frowned. Mentally ill?

The rarest and most powerful exception to the rule is the power of a death master. Powerful human sorcerers can control the shades of the departed, and it is the innate ability of creatures such as Demons (See page 49), certain Faeries (See pages 67, 108), and gods of death such as Reapers (See page 275) to prevent or even reverse the passage of a ghost from this world. Billy was about to turn to page 275 to see exactly what the book had to say about Grim when he heard the stairs creaking in the hallway.

Billy hissed and looked down at the book. He slammed it shut with a thought and sent it zipping through the air to land on its brothers. Billy focused on the string and it tied itself back together. He slid the sweatshirt back onto the stack just as the door began to open. He rose rapidly towards the rafters. He hung there in silent stillness as the girl stepped through the threshold.

The girl smiled widely and hummed a happy song as she shut the door behind her. She walked over to her bed, undoing her earrings and placing them on the night stand. She pulled her Gravity Falsl Gremloblins sweater off over her head, revealing the Gravity Falls Gremloblins t-shirt underneath it.. She tossed the sweater onto the pile on her bed and let out a loud sigh. She made a small jump into the air and flopped backwards onto her bed.

She lay there quietly for about a minute, staring at the ceiling. Her expression grew perplexed as she studied the rafters. Billy held his breath, though he had none, and tried to remind himself that she couldn't see him.

"Hey." She said, looking straight at the empty patch of ceiling where Billy floated, supposedly invisibly.

Billy blinked. "Um... Hi?" he said, not sure she would even hear him.

"What's your name?" she asked with a tired smile.

"Um... Billy?" he said, still not convinced she was actually talking to him.

"That's cool. I'm Mabel." She said.

"Okay." Billy said, shifting his eyes from side to side.

"So..." she started, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah?" he answered.

"What are you doing in my room?" she asked.

"Oh. Um..." Billy was at a loss for words.

[A/N Hey there you guys! It's the guy who wrote this fic! I've been meaning to stick author's notes on most of these chapters, and I just sort of... didn't. Oh well. I'm just writing here to say that I actually wrote this chapter sometime last month. I thought I uploaded it before now. I didn't though. Well that's pretty much it. I'm not too much a fan of this chapter, but in fanfiction you can't have too much shame.]