*Bonus Chapter*
This takes place several years after the end of the story... enjoy!
A Cabin Among the Pines
The door of the old cabin creaked open slowly, its rusted hinges audibly protesting with each inch the door was moved. A puff of stale air blew out through the doorway, heavy with dust and a faint taste of decay that clung to the back of Dipper's throat.
"Gosh Dip, you sure know how to pick the most romantic spots to take a girl," Mabel said, her nose wrinkled slightly in distaste as she surveyed the dark interior of the wooden room.
"I'm not really sure what you had been expecting considering the fact that this place is supposedly haunted or cursed or something. People haven't stayed here in quite a while." Dipper muttered as he scanned the room, taking note of the strange disarray of the furniture.
Dark splotches marked the walls along the left hand side of the door, thin streaks of some unidentifiable substance that almost formed the shape of an outstretched hand standing out stark against the faded woodgrain. Wind whistled mournfully through a cracked pane of glass, lifting up small clouds of dust in its wake. Scuffed lines of white grit marked the small patch of empty floor in front of the ash choked fireplace. Dipper walked over slowly and knelt beside them, the sound of his footsteps seeming unnaturally faint and muffled considering the closeness of the walls.
Chalk lines. They look like they had been vigorously scrubbed out at some point, making their original design impossible to guess. The remains of an outline from some bygone police investigation, or clues to something far more sinister?
"Should I start filming already? This place really doesn't look super-photogenic so far." Mabel said, fiddling with the leather strap of the large bag hanging off her shoulder which contained the digital camera that the twins used to make their living.
Dipper shook his head and stood up, wiping the traces of dust from his hands onto the sides of his faded old jeans.
"It definitely looks like something ugly happened here a while back, but I'm not really sure if it would be something that we should use for an episode. Bigfoot, yes. Giant monster birds, definitely. Whatever messed up stuff happened here though... I don't know, it seems a little disrespectful." Dipper said uneasily, his eyes drifting back to the odd stain on the wall.
Looking at it from a new angle, he noted that the marks corresponding with fingers were far longer than any hand he'd seen before. Longer and spaced just slightly too far out of proportion.
"Well what are we even doing here if we aren't going to be making a video?" Mabel asked, annoyance plain in her voice. She'd lost the coin toss earlier that morning and had been forced to drive Dipper's finicky old sedan for hours through the winding country backroads while he napped in the passenger seat, and it had made her somewhat testy.
"Just because we aren't going to be filming an episode today doesn't mean that there isn't a mystery that needs solving." Dipper said distractedly, forcing himself to tear his eyes away from the disconcerting stains.
"I guess this one's going to be pro bueno or whatever the proper term is when we do this junk for free." Mabel said with a sigh, gently setting the camera bag down at her feet.
"Pro bono, and I think that term would only apply if we were lawyers," Dipper replied.
"Grunkle Stan would be so disappointed in you for not trying to make a buck off this though," Mabel said with mock sternness, shaking her head slowly from side to side.
"We can leave this part out when we send him the monthly postcard - anyway I think he'd be more than impressed with our progress considering that we were able to pay rent last month with the profit from our t-shirt sales alone." Dipper said.
"That's not too hard considering how cheap the rent is at our place," Mabel said, "but it is nice to finally not have to resort to scams and tricks to get by anymore."
"Pfft, and you say I'm the one Stan would be ashamed of," Dipper said with a smirk.
Mabel responded by playfully sticking her tongue out at her brother and waggling a hand at him dismissively and he rolled his eyes at her in turn, but the grin stayed on his face. He stepped in closer towards Mabel and cupped her chin in his hand, raising her face up to meet his eyes and then bent low to plant a quick kiss on her lips in place of an apology for teasing her. Though Dipper had intended for the kiss to be nothing more than a quick peck Mabel had ideas of her own, catching the lapels of his old canvas jacket tight in her hand and standing on tiptoes to press her mouth firmly against his own. He responded eagerly to the kiss, slipping his arms around Mabel's back and running his hands down the curve of her spine as she hummed appreciatively into his mouth.
The kiss broke, and Dipper felt a contented grin start to spread its way across his face. Even now, years after the two had taken their first hesitant steps to acknowledging their feelings for one another, Dipper always felt like the luckiest guy in the world just after he had felt those soft lips against his.
Mabel met her brother's satisfied expression with a more mischievous grin of her own and then presented Dipper his own wallet back to him with a flourish, like a magician unveiling a new trick. Dipper's eyebrows raised and he quickly patted his pocket only to find it empty, and he accepted the wallet back from Mabel's outstretched hand with a grunt.
"Even if I don't want to make my living scamming people, I can still think of a few reasons why I'm that loveable old coots favorite," Mabel said teasingly.
"I'm pretty sure that trick wasn't something that Stan ever showed you," Dipper replied dryly.
"Well, the pickpocketing part yes - the kiss was something I added in to jazz it up a bit and give it some of that patented Mabel flair!" she said with a cocky grin.
A gust of wind suddenly whistled hard through the cracked windowpane of the cabin and the old boards groaned loudly, as if in pain. Mabel's grin turned to a sour frown as she looked around the dismal room once again.
"This place is grosser than I imagined it would be when you said we were going to be taking a trip out to a lakeside cabin," she grumbled.
Dipper reached out and ran a soothing hand along Mabel's back, massaging gently around her neck and shoulders.
"We probably won't be here for too long. You know most of these 'haunted' places turn out to be a bust, but if it's real then it will have been worth the drive," Dipper said.
Mabel reached her hand up and laid it over Dipper's, her fingers giving it a small squeeze.
"Yeah, I know... but I get to pick the site of our next road trip." she said firmly.
"Is it going to be Disneyland again?" Dipper asked.
"Well we never really uncovered whether the ghosts in the Haunted Mansion ride were real or not, so I think its still worth taking another look." Mabel said in a questioning tone of voice.
"They were fake Mabel. They were also fake the other time we went." Dipper replied with a smile.
"Third times the charm." Mabel said.
It was Mabel who discovered the false floorboards in the cabins bedroom, a trapdoor concealed beneath an ancient bearskin rug that had glared up at her with dull glass eyes. Dipper insisted on going down the rickety stairs first, and the flashlight held loosely in his hand swept over the small hidden room sunk deep into the earth to reveal its secrets.
The walls were made from large blocks of rough brown stone, crudely cut and inexpertly mortared together. A large heavily built wooden table was the central feature of the chamber, piled high with papers and various odds and ends. A cabinet stood against the back wall, its doors flung carelessly open. Dippers flashlight beam swept over the shelves and gleamed off the surface of a number of dusty glass bottles and jars full of dull amber colored fluid. Vaguely organic shapes floated within the jars, their details concealed by shadows. Dipper noted, with a grimace, that the wall opposite from the cabinet and table had several heavy metal staples bolted into it and that rusted iron chains dangled from them. Small white shapes littered the floor around the chains, mostly splinters and slivers but there were still a few largely intact pieces that confirmed Dippers suspicion that they had once been bones.
"So what do you think - is this a genuine mystery or just regular basement junk?" Mabel called from the bedroom above.
"I'm guessing the reports and stories about this place were probably true," Dipper called back as he walked over toward the table and started to take a closer look at its contents.
The clutter mostly seemed to be papers of some sort, covered in densely packed lines of handwriting. The top layer of papers were spattered with dry brown stains. Shuffling some of the papers aside revealed a book, no larger than a paperback novel, which was bound in tanned leather. Its surface was puckered and wrinkled almost like tree bark but despite the chokingly dry air in the room it felt somehow clammy to the touch. When Dipper ran his fingertips over the cover he could almost swear that he heard a faint whisper at the back of his head... unintelligible words that seemed somehow tantalizing in their vagueness.
"How bad is it down there?" Mabel shouted down.
Dipper shook his head and glared suspiciously down at the book.
"Pretty bad," Dipper called back up.
"Werewolf lair bad?" Mabel called down.
Dipper gave the room another once over and stroked his chin speculatively.
"No, not that bad. Still pretty gross though." Dipper said, his eyes drawn back to the book in his hand.
"Alright, get your butt back up here then so we can figure out what to do," Mabel called down.
Dipper started back toward the stairs and stopped himself just before he started to ascend. He looked down at his hand and saw that he was still holding the strange clammy book, despite having been sure that he had left it on the table. He frowned and gritted his teeth, his fingers reluctantly opening to drop the book at his feet where he kicked it aside, away from the stairs and back toward the table. Dipper could feel a vicious silent growl in the back of his mind when the book slid across the earthen floor and slammed into the leg of the old table.
The trapdoor slammed shut and the room was left in darkness once again. A sound like the fluttering of wings broke the silence, the dry rustle of paper scraping against paper.
Mabel set the camera up on its tripod in the cabins living room, adjusting the angle of the shot carefully before she gave the "all ready" thumbs up to Dipper. It hadn't taken much convincing to get him to agree to shoot just a short segment for their channel - more of a PSA than a full episode.
A fire crackled merrily in the hearth and Dipper stood in front of it holding a pair of heavy iron tongs in his hands at arms length away from his body, the metal pincers gripping the leathery book from the hidden basement. The surface of the leather seemed to squirm and writhe, though it was unclear whether it was simply from the firelight casting strange shadows on its surface or not.
"Are we rolling?" Dipper asked, feeling his heartbeat quicken when Mabel gave a nod of confirmation.
"Hey guys, this is Dipper here with a friendly reminder for all of you who are going to be taking your summer vacations soon. Most of you are going to have a pretty normal time hanging out with your friends or hitting the beach or whatever, but every year there's always an unlucky few who get invited to hang out at some creepy old spot in the woods that has a shady local reputation. This doesn't have to turn out badly though as long as you remember to take some simple precautions -"
Dipper gestured toward the book grasped firmly in the fireplace tongs, now definitely shaking and jerking about, its pages rustling between its covers with a noise like a hissing snake.
"-the most important one being this: if you find a secret room, or a hidden shed or a concealed basement or whatever: don't go inside it. This is basic stuff, people. Just board it up, forget that it's there and enjoy the rest of your summer. If you DO go in though then remember the second most important rule - immediately destroy any really weird or creepy things you find down there before one of your idiot friends tries to read from it out loud or spills their blood all over it or something equally dumb. Fire usually does the trick very well for this job, its pretty much a universal cleanser."
With that Dipper lobbed the nightmarish journal into the heart of the flames. Mabel zoomed in as the squirming leather cover began to twist and shift, ridges and puckers and whorls of texture forming into a shape like a screaming face. The fire flared up high and hot, its edges tinged with flashes of blue and gold light. Thick clouds of choking smoke billowed out up through the chimney and with an unholy shrieking noise the book crumbled to ash. In an instant the strange gloomy shadow that had hung over the cabin like a shroud was gone.
"See? The place is already like, 30% less creepy." Dipper said brightly.
"Like magic!" Mabel chimed in from behind the camera.
"Or better yet, like not doing magic - especially when it comes from demonic old books that try to talk to you or whisper in your brain." Dipper replied before turning back to face the camera once again. "Just remember to follow those few simple rules and you guys should have a great and monster-free summer! This has been a public service announcement brought to you by the Mystery Twins!"
Mabel swung the camera around to her face and flashed it a thousand-watt smile.
"For more life-saving tips like these be sure to check out the rest of our channel - and while you're there maybe you can click on one of those handy links on the bottom and buy some merch!" Mabel said brightly.
"Mabel!" Dipper groaned.
"What? Money doesn't grow on trees. This is what we do!" Mabel said cheerfully before snapping the camera off.
She set the camera down on a nearby table and flashed Dipper a quick smile which he returned.
"How did I do? I always feel weird talking directly to the camera like that," Dipper asked.
"You were a little sweaty, but we can probably fix it in post once I mess with the lighting." Mabel said as she dug a laptop out from her heavy leather satchel and plugged the camera into it to begin extracting the video for editing.
Dipper turned back to the fireplace and began feeding the stacks of papers from the basement into it. There was no strange burst of magic light or unholy screaming as these were destroyed, but it never hurt to be cautious. Who knows what the original owner of the basement may have copied down from that book?
"I guess if we're done here then we can head back home once I finish burning these. After we board up the basement for good of course." Dipper said.
Mabel turned to Dipper from her seat at the table, a speculative look on her face.
"Do we have to go already?" she asked.
"I thought you wanted out of this place as soon as possible?" Dipper asked, mildly surprised by her question.
"Well that was before we de-spookified it. Now I'm thinking it might be fun to spend some time here... I mean, the woods are really pretty in this area and the lake nearby looks like its perfect for swimming." Mabel said wistfully.
Dipper paused in thought. It had been a while since they'd taken a real vacation - even if they didn't exactly have regular 9 to 5 office jobs it was still a lot of work to be constantly researching new phenomena to go film, not to mention the tedious effort of editing together their videos. A week or two away from their 'job' couldn't hurt... plus he was almost certain that Mabel hadn't packed any of her vacation clothes and that probably meant skinny dipping if they were going to be spending time by the lake, something that he was never opposed to.
"Alright, that sounds like fun actually," Dipper agreed, "just as soon as we double check this place for any other little nightmarish surprises."
"Way ahead of you bro beau - I already broke the creepy old tape deck I found in the bedroom and unwound all the tapes. Especially the ones that had all kinds of weird writing on them in permanent marker." Mabel said.
"I love you Mabel Pines" Dipper said with a warm smile.
"Love you too Dippingsauce,"