Cassandra and Elowen ran through the forrest, Cassandra's phone light illuminating the debris spray of this bizarre little creature that had tried to steal her phone.
"Why are we chasing it?!" Cassandra asked, not slowing down in the slightest.
"I'unno," Elowen admitted, "you started it, didn't you?"
"I thought you did!" Cassandra hollered back.
There was a silence between them, short of their own panting, heavy footfalls, and the creature's grunts and scrabbles.
"Let's catch it!" Cassandra concluded.
"Heck yeah!" Elowen agreed.
They barreled through the trees and brambles with a renewed gusto, Cassandra trying to snap the occasional picture and failing miserably. They had enough momentum as they burst into the clearing that they narrowly avoided running headlong into the Mystery Shack.
"Crud," Cassandra gasped, as the strange creature scrabbled in through an ajar gift shop door. "do we follow it?"
"Yes," Elowen concluded after a moment's consideration.
In the dark, closed gift shop they could hear the good-natured conversation of their parents, but tried harder to hear the creature rustling around.
"I don't see it," Cassandra said, shutting off her light.
"It's got to be here," Elowen insisted, looking around the dimly moonlit room.
In a flurry of clatters and motion the creature clambered out from behind the counter and hauled up to the top of the vending machine; lit by moonlight and perched on higher ground the girls got their first good look at the creature, bug-eyed and mostly hairless. It seemed to have found a pack of candy in the bottom of the machine.
It hissed at them.
Cassandra took a picture.
Startled by the flash, the creature tumbled off the machine and scurried back out the way it had come, through the door and into the woods.
"Well," Elowen concluded, "that happened."
"Not a half-bad shot," Cassandra complimented herself, turning the phone screen for her new friend to see.
"If it were a person that shot would be hideous," Elowen noted, "but for a weird, gross, forrest creature that's nice and clear."
Elowen put away her pocket knife and turned to leave, but she found Cassandra was still looking at the vending machine.
"Come on, man, we gotta' get back," she nudged the other girl.
"I didn't even think vending machine keypads lit up," Cassandra mused, stepping closer to the vending machine, "why would these keys be-?" she touched the vending machine and it swung away from her hand, clicking back into the wall. Cassandra stared at it for a moment. "Crud, what was the code?!" she blurted, "It was in a sort of C-shape, wasn't it? So maybe…" she set to punching keys, "A, 1, B, C, 3?" she muttered. With a hiss the vending machine creaked forward.
"It's a door?"
"Looks like it," Cassandra agreed, swinging the vending machine open. "Looks like we need the light again," she sighed, tapping it on and shining it down the old stairs. "I mean, we already chased a hairless forrest creature, how bad could a basement be?" she mentioned, trying to sell herself on the idea as much as Elowen.
"I mean, we're here," Elowen agreed.
With great anticipation they crept down the steps, which ended much sooner than they thought.
"Well, that's underwhelming," Cassandra sighed, shining the light over the wall.
"Dude, it's a door," Elowen pointed out, pulling the rusted metal away. The two girls stepped into the space they found and looked around,
"It's an elevator," Cassandra clarified, noting the down button beside the door.
"Do you think it works?" Elowen asked.
Cassandra pushed the down button and it lit up,
"Maybe," she concluded, stepping back into the elevator box. It jerked sickeningly, and began to drop. "it works," she squeaked, clutching the wall as the old rickety thing rattled and creaked down the shaft.
They came to the basement with a thud and stared out as the door slid open.
"That is utter blackness," Cassandra concluded.
"Check for switches," Elowen hissed, the darkness and decrepitness of the place compelling her to keep her voice low.
Cassandra shone the light around, particularly on the walls closest to them, and found loads of buttons and switches.
"Which one?" she asked Elowen, over her shoulder.
"All of them until one does something," Elowen concluded.
The two started frantically flipping switches, Elowen taking on a method of lining up her arm under the switches and flipping about ten at a time, and all of a sudden the basement glowed to life, humming and chattering in technological confusion. Through the soft glows of electronics all around them Cassandra saw a lamp on a desk and clicked it on, the best light source down there. The desk had a few notebooks on it, neatly stacked-
"Cassandra," Elowen said, nudging the other girl's shoulder.
Cassandra looked up through the pane of glass above the desk, a few long cracks across it's surface, and her jaw went a little slack.
"What is that?" she breathed, looking up in awe at the big, triangular metal structure, a black circular void in the middle of it, strange symbols around the void's edge glowing softly.
"No idea," Elowen responded.
Cassandra raised her phone to take a picture, but in the low light it didn't look like much of anything.
"Should we get closer?" Cassandra asked, unable to take her eyes off it.
"I don't know," Elowen shivered, "It makes my hair stand on end. I don't know if that's good or bad."
"We know it's down here now," Cassandra reasoned, finally tearing her gaze away, "we can come back."
"Yeah, let's do that," Elowen agreed.
"But let's look around," Cassandra added, picking up one of the notebooks, "it's super cool down here." she ran a hand over the decorations on the front; someone had very carefully lacquered on a blue pine tree, cut out of construction paper, and drew a '1' on in silver sharpie. She flipped open the book and looked over the first page; it was dated in late May 2013. She read through some of the pencil scrawl:
The first day I came to Gravity Falls the journal gave me some advice:
TRUST NO ONE.
I'm still not sure if that was true. I think I chose the right people to trust.
But I guess you never know. This summer will probably be pretty boring;
nothing can top last summer. But that'll get a book all to itself.
"My brother's gonna' kill me," Elowen realized, looking at her cell reception, "he can't find us if he needs to. We gotta' go," she insisted, turning to Cassandra.
"Got it," Cassandra accepted, scooping up the notebooks. She hesitated, noticing a dusty photo frame. She brushed some of the dust off, and looked it over.
"Dude, going, now, we need to," Elowen emphasized, walking up behind her.
"It's my dad," she explained, showing Elowen the photo, "it's him and his sister. Like, way back in the day."
"Woah," Elowen agreed. "but we really gotta' go," she repeated.
"Yeah, OK," Cassandra accepted, leaving the frame on the desk.
It was disconcerting to step out of the dark, quiet woods and into the bright cabin bustling with activity.
"Oh, hey! There you guys are," Paul grinned, noticing Cassandra and Elowen in the doorway. "you guys were out there a long time! You OK?"
"Yup," the two girls responded, maybe a little too quickly.
"Cool."
"Hey, Cassie!" Ashwin beamed, rushing over to his cousin, "I've been hanging out with Paul!" he told her in an excited whisper, "I think it's going well!"
"Good job, man," Cassandra half-heartedly returned, patting him on the shoulder with her free hand, "have fun with that."
"Alright you whippersnappers!" a young man hollered, stepping through the door behind Cassandra and Elowen, startling the girls considerably. "Mystery twins are here to break up the party!" Stan Ramirez concluded.
"Ohmigod, that's Cassie!" Gabby Ramirez gasped.
Cassandra blinked up at the 20-something, trying to figure out who this was and how she knew her name.
"You don't really remember us, huh? We're your Grunkle Soos's kids. We baby sat you a couple times back in the day, get christmas cards from your family, that kind of thing."
"Oh, OK, I think I remember you," Cassandra accepted. Though, if she was honest with herself, only a little; she remembered Grunkle Soos had kids, but she couldn't really connect the vague memories to the college students in front of her.
"And you're Ashwin!" Gabby concluded, "You guys have gotten so big! How old are you now?"
"Fifteen," Ashwin told her.
"Fourteen," Cassandra followed up.
"Wow! No wonder you're so tall! And I bet you're Faith," Gabby added, flashing a grin at the little girl hovering by Ashwin's side. "nice to meet you, I'm Gabby."
"Hi, Gabby," Faith responded with a smile and a wave.
"You'll have to come by and see us at the shack," Gabby concluded, "but right now we're here to break up the party."
Ashwin, the middle few 'enda's and the Northwest-Passage kids groaned in protest.
"Sorry," Stan said, holding up his hands in surrender, "Mr. Mystery's orders. The parents all expect to be talking late in to the night, so they've asked that we come to make sure you at least pull an all-nighter in your own homes."
Then the Ramirez twins flipped their tour-leading and tourist-wrangling skills into gear.
"Alright, Paul, you can get your family home, right?" Gabby prompted, tossing a gesture at the eldest Corduroy.
"You bet," he agreed, his little brother already slung under his arm like a sack of 'taters. "you ready to go, Elowen?"
"Sure," she accepted. "See ya' later," she told Cassandra, tossing her a wave as they turned to leave.
"Then I'll take the 'enda's," Gabby concluded, nodding to the gaggle of girls, "and you can get the Northwest-Passage kids home, cool?" she asked her brother.
"Got it. Hayes, Felicity, got all your stuff?" Stan called.
The blonde kids appeared before him, and with a scuffle of people and chatter only rivaled by the one when everyone got there, they were all gone, with only a "Goodnight!" tossed over Gabby's shoulder.
All alone in the house, and all at least a little spooked by an almost empty house in the middle of the night, the three cousins headed for their shared room. Cassandra made a b-line for the loft she had claimed for her own, under the argument that the other two were siblings and usually had to share a room anyway, but she was an only child, and needed space, and she also got up there first so there. Not the most mature argument the fourteen year old had ever made, but what're ya' gonna' do.
In a baggy promotional t-shirt and pajama pants Cassandra settled down in her newfound bed, bedside light off, facing away from the semi-lit room below her, where Ashwin was reading his sister a story. She lay there a moment, trying to clear her head and make herself fall asleep, but between Ashwin's reading (however soft and courteous), and the extra light, and that nagging feeling-
She rolled over and pulled Notebook 1 from the shelf in her bedside table, fishing her book light out of her backpack.
Today was pretty boring. It was good to see everyone, for sure,
but there isn't really anything to write about. The weirdness has abated.
I mean, don't get me wrong, the Manotaurs are still in the woods,
the Multi-Bear still lives in his cave (we hang out sometimes),
I think the lili-putt-ians are still at the mini-golf course, and I know I've
seen some of the gnomes.
That's it: I'll write about the gnomes. So, last year, me and my
sister had first gotten here, and she's all gung-ho about a summer
romance, and finds this guy who is GNOMES. Ok, that was a little
fast. I'll work on my pacing. So, I had just found journal 3 - very
important - and my sister was bugging me, but also she met this
guy, and I was kind of suspicious
Cassandra reached the end of the scribbled narrative on the page and took a moment with the illustration of a squat little gnome, pointed hat, beard, the works. Underneath, in pink glitter pen, the drawing was credited to 'His Sister.' Above the gnome were scrawled the words "WEAKNESS: LEAF-BLOWERS."
"What'cha reading?"
Cassandra fumbled with the book, snapping it shut, and turning to look at Ashwin, at the top of the ladder up to the loft.
"Just… a thing I found," she spluttered, very bad at sounding convincing on short notice.
"Looks cool," he responded, voice low. "Faith's asleep, but I saw you still had a light on. Just checking."
She offered a nod of acknowledgement.
"G'night Cassie."
"Night, Ash."
XZMWB NLMHGVI ORPVH HPRGGOVH YVHG