Apparition
(October 25-31, 2014)
5 Trouble
Angelique's mother, Mrs. Flannigan, was a vague, thin, nervous-looking woman whose tightly-curled hair was a lighter blonde than her daughter's. "Take our guests outside, dear," she said to Angelique. "Show them around."
"Mother probably has one of her headaches," Angelique said sourly, and Dipper thought that if they'd been invented in her era, she would have put air quotes around the word "headaches." She led them through the house, past the dining room and kitchen, and out a back door. "Come on and I'll show you the sights," she said sarcastically.
And so, they walked out into the back yard. It was a spacious back yard, true—a level lawn, still showing green even though the trees were mostly brown or giving up the last tinges of their fall colors. Toward the back, they slushed through a heavy piling of dry leaves, because in the last third of the yard—it had to be two acres, Dipper thought—trees grew close together, almost a copse of them—majestic trees, which Dipper could not first identify. That was odd because, thanks to Wendy's expertise, he had learned to spot almost every imaginable species of tree.
And then he remembered a species that had all but gone extinct, and the picture of one swam into his mind's eye and matched what he was seeing. "Elms," he said.
"Yeah," Angelique said carelessly. "It's shady and cool back here in the summer. Good place to hide out from my parents. Used to, when I liked to read, I'd go hide myself under the trees for hours. I liked it in the fall, too, this time of year. When I was a kid, I used to love to dive in a big pile of these leaves." She kicked at them now.
They reached the back fence, black, eight feet tall, wrought-iron. Beyond it a steep descent led down to what Dipper suspected was a creek, though he couldn't see it through the undergrowth.
"You've got a really nice yard," Mabel told her.
"Yeah, so what?" Angelique said flatly. They were out of sight of the house, and she hiked up her skirt and pulled out a cigarette from the pack tucked into her stocking. "Want one?"
"We don't smoke," Dipper said quickly.
"It's bad for you," Mabel warned. "Those things'll kill you."
Angelique shrugged moodily, took a match from her pocket, and struck it on the fence. She puffed on the cigarette and coughed. "All the kids I hang around with smoke 'em," she said. She coughed some more, and her eyes were watering.
"You just started, didn't you?" Dipper asked.
"What if I did? What's it to you?"
Dipper shrugged. "Nothing. I just thought you weren't used to it."
"Angelique," Mabel said, "you don't have to show off for us. We like you without the cigarettes and all, you know."
She flashed Mabel a short, hot glare, and then with defiance took two more quick puffs before she dropped the cigarette and stamped on it, grinding it into the leaves.
"Better be sure it's out," Mabel said. "It could start a fire."
"I wish," Angelique said moodily, "I could burn down the whole damn town!"
Mabel shot Dipper an alarmed glance. "It seems like a pretty nice place to us," he said mildly. "It's lots homier than our old neighborhood near Oakland. What do you have against it?"
"Bunch of busybodies live here," she said, leaning against an elm trunk. "You can't do this, you can't do that, nice girls wouldn't, blah, blah, blah! I'm going to be sixteen in two more days! My folks treat me like I was six!"
"At least," Mabel said softly, "You have folks."
"That's no big deal. They don't even like me."
Dipper bit back what he'd started to say—that she had to be mistaken—and instead settled for "That must be rough."
"Used to bother me," Angelique said gruffly. Then she forced a smile. "Ever kissed a girl, Dipper?"
"Uh, yeah, I have," he said.
"Want to kiss me?"
"You're pretty, but—you know—I got someone back home," he told her. "We've made a promise to each other."
"Come here. California's a long way off. And I'm right in front of you."
Mabel urged him with an elbow. Unwillingly, Dipper came up to her and leaned over to kiss her. She wasn't any good at it. She pressed her lips so tightly together that it was as if she were trying to imitate a duck's beak. Then she smacked her lips as they broke apart. She also tasted of bitter tobacco smoke. "What did you think of that?" she asked triumphantly.
Not much! "It was good," he said. "It was OK."
"Angelique," Mabel asked, "what did your mom and dad do to make you so angry at them?"
"Oh, I don't know," she said, sounding both sad and irritable. "Just—I can't talk to them! About anything! If I try with Mom, she just says, 'It will all work out when you're older.' And with Dad, it's 'Go ask your mom.' If Marcie hadn't left home—"
"Who's that?" Mabel asked.
"Marceline. My big sister. She's off at college in Poughkeepsie, New York. About as far from this dump as she could get!" Her face crumpled, and a couple of tears ran down her cheeks. "Damn it. Look what you made me do. I—Marceline was the one I always could—could t-talk to, and sh-she's gone."
Mabel hugged her, and to Dipper's surprise, Angelique, the tough girl, clung to her and sobbed. "The k-kids at s-school are saps. They d-don't like me. At least Butch and his pals don't t-treat me like poison!"
"Dipper," Mabel said, "go away. We want to have a girl talk."
"OK," Dipper said. He went back past the house, through the front gate, and since no one seemed to be around, he continued for a long walk, down Parkside Street, past houses that became gradually less grand, lots that became gradually smaller. He passed the graceful old Carnegie Library and noticed a sort of trail leading through an overgrown empty lot beside it, snaking down an incline—the same one, he supposed, that passed behind the Flannigan house.
On impulse, he turned left and walked along the path through scattered trees, down a hillside. Sure enough, he saw water ahead—not just a creek, as he'd thought, but a slow river. A fallen tree lay across it. Dipper started down toward the watercourse, but somehow the shadows grew too dim, too deep, too quickly.
His skin tingled, his blood pounded. He realized he had not just gone down a slope, but into a ravine overhung with despondent-looking trees, gloomy and dark in a way that he didn't like. He felt something in the air, something that did not like him, or any living person. At the farthest edge of hearing came sounds sinister soft: whispers, surly resentful sounds, threats, words that failed to shape themselves in his ears, the suggestions of quick stealthy footsteps just behind him.
If I only had my anomaly detector!
What had Falstaff said in the Shakespeare play after escaping certain death by playing dead? "The better part of valor is discretion." Sometimes true courage consisted of simply knowing when to get the heck out of Dodge.
This was the time.
He reversed course and discovered he'd somehow wandered off the pathway. No matter. He'd navigated his way through trackless forest in Gravity Falls, and he could do the same thing in Greentown, Illinois! Dipper climbed up the steep bank, grabbing for handholds—saplings, roots half eroded from the earth, even briars with wicked sharp thorns that bit blood from his palms. He sensed seething insensate rage all around him, a disappointment that he had not ventured just one step more into the ravine, a vengeful hatred of his intrusion into dreaming malignant evil that waited like the open petals of a Venus' flytrap to snap shut on . . . meat.
Up the slope the trees thinned at last, and he glimpsed the tan sandstone of the library building far above him—the building stood, he now realized, on the edge of a bluff. But, keeping it in view, he crabbed sideways, tripping and slipping until he struck the path again, then half-ran, half-stumbled back to the street. He wiped his bloody palms on his handkerchief, the wounds smarting.
And then—someone stood looking at him just as he lurched into the abandoned overgrown lot beside the library, and Dipper stopped, staring.
An old man, wearing a black suit that in its creases looked almost green with age, stood on the sidewalk, leaning on a cane. Straggling gray hair hung lank from his head, the summit of it bald as the crest of an eroded old mountain. His face was like a relief map of time, wrinkles and folds, ridges and valleys, the skin yellowish, the eyes gazing out of dark deep-set caves, the irises black and sharp and glittering. The ancient suit hung loosely on him, his scrawny neck projecting from the collar of his shirt—white silk, but yellow with age—and the black string tie hung limp at his sagging throat. He was smiling, with snaggly, wide-spaced teeth the color of pawns in an antique ivory chess set.
Dipper paused, frozen in shock, and in a whispery papery voice, the old fellow said, "The ravine's no place to wander, son! No place for a youngster to roam and ramble. It's a hungry spot, one of the mouths of Earth wanting to champ and chew on flesh and sinew, to drink blood and crunch bone! Only the lonely ones stray there and stay there. You're too young to join their ranks! Be warned. Stay well out of it."
"Y-yes, sir," Dipper stammered. The old man looked and sounded evil, but—his words rang almost in a friendly way.
"I won't bite," the old man said, grinning. "I can't bite! Can't afford to lose even one more chopper! You recognize me, boy?"
"N-no, sir," Dipper said, approaching, but very slowly.
The spindly form straightened, the left hand raised and pointed the cane—it reminded Dipper of Bill Cipher's antics, especially when the old guy hung the cane on thin air and it stayed dangling there. "Why, I'm famous!" he cackled, taking an elaborate bow, his left harm folded over his stomach, his right extended to the side. He straightened again. "Toured the world I did with the Darkness and Gloom Consolidated Shadow Show and Mystic Circus! I'm Mr. Electrician, I am, born and bred in Greentown and mean to die there one day! Watch me!"
He stretched his bony arms out to either side, spread his fingers—and from each one and from his two thumbs, cobwebby blue lightning forked and crooked, sizzling, bolts three inches long, creeping and writhing, bending double like an inchworm measuring you for your coffin, creeping across his palms and the backs of his hands on spidery electric legs.
"Yes, sir!" he said in a chant, holding his palms a foot apart so the crooked lightning snapped across the gap like it did in the machinery of an old Frankenstein film, "Struck by lightning at the age of three, I was! Given up for dead by the doctors! Gave my mother quite a shock! Then I opened my eyes and zizzed with electricity and woke to my destiny! Mr. Electrician! I can take any jolt of juice, any voltage and amperage, and laugh it off! In a thunderstorm, I go stand on the tip top tower of a tall building holding a steel rod straight up and I laugh at the lightning strikes! The more I absorb, the more life I have! Why, when I retired with the rheumatiz, I got so creaky and cranky and crabbed that I had my daughter, the Woman Made of Rubber, drive me to the State Penitentiary and persuaded the warden to strap me into the electric chair! Didn't want a reprieve, no sir, ha-ha! The guard threw that big old copper switch one, two, three times, and each time the contacts clicked and buzzed like ten million angry hornets, and twenty amps at twenty thousand, count 'em, twen-ty thou-sand volts surged through my body! Any ordinary man would have been cooked, fried, killed stone hot dead, steam coming out of every pore, blood boiled to red-jelly pudding! Me, when they unstrapped me, sonny boy, I jumped up from that chair and danced the Turkey Trot to a ragtime tune tinkled out by Warden Williams on the honkey-tonkey ivories of an upright grand normally used to play funeral tunes as a good-riddance for the undearly departed! Killed the rheumatics stone dead, it did, and left me in fine fettle! Ain't hobbled a step since, and that's been ten years ago!" He grabbed the cane from the air with his left hand, twirled in place and did a shuffling soft-shoe, then grinned, electricity sparking from his teeth, leaned way forward, holding his cane behind him and high, and extended a bony right hand. "Shake it for luck!" he said.
"Bill?" Dipper asked in an unsteady voice. "Is that you?"
Mr. Electrician roared with thundery laughter. "No, sir, I am the one, the only, the original, the unparalleled Mr. Electrician of Greentown! Born Harry Ray, new-christened by the bolt from the blue on my third birthday, and Mr. Electrician from then until forever! Shake my hand and get a charge of good luck! I see mistrust in your eyes and fear in your bearing! Shake my hand and shake 'em off! Lack of trust can rust you, boy! This is your one and maybe your only chance to do what you must do and still get to sleep in your own bed and not in your grave tonight! It's meant kindly, so kindly take it. Going once! Going twice! Going thr—"
Impulsively, Dipper reached out and shook the nearly skeletal hand. It was like grasping a leather bag filled with loose sticks. But the fingers closed on his, and he felt a rush of power, grabbing him, flowing up his arm and down his legs, grounding him, shocking him, shaking him and then leaving him standing and feeling that after a long time locked in an airless closet he was gulping down sweet fresh air. Life flowed into him, and he said, "Wow!" as the old man let go. He felt wonderful. He gave Mr. Electrician a grin.
"Just donated you a little, sonny boy," the old man said. "You'll need it. Didn't change anything, just sent you a little extra lease on life on a day when I sense you'll need it." He winked. "Ain't no proper angel, but I got a feeling when the good Lord reached down His finger of lighting and touched a little baby, He gave the boy a greater purpose. Six times now I've used it and not had to regret it once. When I do it a seventh time, I figure I'll lay down my bones and go to meet my Maker and shake Him by the hand. Suppose it'll be much of a shock?" He cackled with laughter again. "Best be on your way now, son. Stick to the sunny side of the street as you go, and don't you look back, and don't ever ramble into the ravine again, not here. There's things hiding in that hollow that harrow me, and I'm no chicken, spring or winter! No, don't say a word, boy, no thanks, no farewells. Just go and remember Mr. Electrician!" He pointed his cane toward the clear sky—and a bolt of lightning leapt from it.
In the jumble of the rumbling thunder and the cascade of the old man's crackling laughter, Dipper ran full-tilt back up Parkside Street, the wind in his ears, heading for Mabel and for whatever it was that lay ahead.