Chapter 8 - 『Wax Museum Murder Mystery 』Part 1

Joseph sighed.

Another morning, another day of thankless jobs at the Mystery Shack. Now, since there wasn't any customers the teen thought he could hang back and relax, yet Stan had other plans and put him and Soos in charge of sweeping and dusting around the house.

"Why did I have this job again?" Oh right, because he needed money to afford his summer stay at this town in order to look out for the Pines Twins and maybe find some answers about the strangeness of this town. "Stan is such a slave driver!"

"He's not that bad." Soos said as he continued sweeping with a content look on his face. "I'm thankful for the job."

"I just don't know why you love it here so much." Joseph knew that someone with Soos' talents could've gotten a much better paying job than at the Mystery Shack. "Why don't get a job elsewhere?"

"I have fond memories of this place."It was all he said to Joseph but there was much more to it; he had worked in the shack for years, ever since he received his last postcard from his absentee father. That day changed his life forever.

"Speaking of fond memories…" Joseph began, "When would you start working at repairing your boat? I can help you if you want." In all honesty the last thing that Jojo wanted was more work, but he felt somewhat responsible for the damage Soos' boat took during their fishing trip. Had he gone with them in the beginning, maybe they could've avoided trashing it. Although with the handyman's skills, they could probably finish real quick without much effort.

"I don't know…" Soos said somewhat hesitant. "I may have work on it an entire summer, but getting the right pieces took even longer." And in several occasions he had to improvise with stuff he found lying around. "I don't think the S.S. Cool Dude will sail again this summer."

"Bummer…"It really was. All that hard work only to be tarnished in an afternoon.

"Don't worry dude, I'm sure I can find some other stuff to fix." Soos reassured, once again seeing the light side of the situation.

"Well, maybe you could install some lights in this hallway, it is dark in here!" Seriously, it was getting hard to see and there were no nearby windows around to let some light in.

"It isn't that bad." Soos had passed and clean this particular hallway hundreds of times so he was very well accustomed to it.

"Says you." Joseph then accidently bumped into an old wooden showcase. "Who puts this kind of thing in the middle of a dark hallway!" He complained loudly, but Soos noticed something strange rolling from behind the case.

"Dude, what's this?" He bent down and piked up the strange object. "Is this… a door knob?"

"What is a door knob doing behind a showcase in the middle of a hallway?" Joseph asked out-loud pondering the answer to this "mystery".

"Look at the wall dude! Behind the wallpaper." Turning around, Joseph saw there was a hole in the wall behind the wallpaper that was peeling off the wall. "Do you think the door knob fits in there?"

"Well, there is only one way to find out." It would be a lie to say that Joseph was not curious about this whole thing. He watch carefully as Soos put the knob on the hole and it fitted perfectly.

"Dude!" The portly man exclaimed in surprise when he turned the knob making a door hidden behind the wallpaper opened. "We gotta tell someone!" He then bolted back from where they came from.

"Hey, wait a sec!" Joseph said in vain before giving chase, leaving the mysterious door behind the wall slightly opened, from where a menacing feeling was emanating out of.

ゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴ

『x-x-x』

Joseph was angry, and with good reason.

"You are telling me that you had this extra room this entire time!?"

After racing to get Dipper and Mabel and share their discovery with them, Joseph and Soos came back to the dark hallway and together with the Twins, entered the strange secret room, only to find several wax statues of famous people and characters, including: Sherlock Holmes, Larry King and Coolio for some none apparent reason.

Then after Stan sneaked on them and scared the heck out of them, he explained about his once most popular attractions: the Gravity Falls Wax Museum! Which he had forgotten all about, until today.

And that bring us back to the present.

"Like I said, I forgot all about it." He then walked pass the angry teen and showed off his wax statues. "I got 'em all! Genghis Khan, Sherlock Holmes, some kind of… I don't know… goblin man?" He stumbled with the last one, the Larry King figure.

"Hey! I'm not done with you!" Jojo was getting even more angry at being so casually ignored. "You said there wasn't any room for me to stay in and that's why I had to go and stay with Soos! No offense man…" He turned to his friend, who assured him there was none to be taken, before he went back to berate Stan. "But it turns out you have this entire room we could've clear out!"

"Like I said, I forgot about it." Stan said annoyed that he had to repeat himself. "Even if I didn't, then you would've to stay here with the Statues in the room."

"Maybe…we could've come to an agreement…" Joseph held back a shudder. He was no scaredy cat, but the idea of staying the night in a dark room surrounded of wax figures really gave him the creeps; that was the stuff of nightmares and horror flicks.

After that, the conversation about the room was pretty much over and Stan proceeded to show them his favorite wax figure; the Abraham Lincoln. Unfortunately, it had become a pile of melted wax because someone let the binds open and the summer sunlight had done their job.

Of course, then Mabel offered to be the one to make a whole new wax figure for Stan, and her Grunkle figuring he had nothing to lose, let her work on it.

『x-x-x』

"So do you know who are you gonna sculpt?" Dipper approached Mabel who was sitting in a storage room with a giant piece of wax in front of her ready to become art.

"Can you help me decide?" Mabel asked hoping for an definitive answer to her dilemma. "I was thinking about a Fairy Princess." Mabel showed him her sketch book full of drawings. "Or a Horse Princess? Or maybe a half fairy princess, half horse fairy princess?"

"M…Maybe…it would be better if it something from real life?" Dipper suggested, hoping to never see again that last drawing of hers; seriously it was creepy.

"Like a Waffle with big strong arms?" She showed him another sketch she created; It was a circle face with two overly muscled arms.

"Y-okay... Or, you know, something else. Like- a real person?" Despite being twins, Dipper was still wondering how his sister's mind process was like. "Or maybe there is something in this sketchbook that could actually work." Dipper took the book from Mabel's hands and started skimming through various strange and colorful drawings.

"Wait Dipper!" Mabel tried to snatch her sketchbook back and away from Dipper's eyes, but she was too late, and her brother found some drawings that she didn't want to show to anyone.

"Here's someone!" After going through several made-up creatures and bizarre combinations of creatures, Dipper was glad to find a picture of a normal person. "Wait! Is that…?"

"No!" Mabel cried as she finally took her book away from him, but it was all for naught.

"Mabel…" Dipper said slowly as he was trying to process what he saw. "Why did you have so many sketches of Joseph?" He had an idea why, but he needed to hear it straight from the horse's mouth.

Mabel turned her back towards her brother, unable to look at his direction. "Well… you see…"she mumbled, and that was all that Dipper needed to hear.

"You have a crush on him!" It wasn't a question more like a statement. "You have a crush on Joseph!" Still, no matter how many times he said it out-loud it was still weird.

"Dipper! Not so loud!" She shushed him, hoping that no one had heard anything.

"Why do you have a crush on him?" He whispered loudly, hoping for a reasonable answer.

"Have you seen him?" Mabel answered with a question instead.

Just what sort of answer was that? Of course he had seen him! Joseph was in fact quite difficult to forget about, thanks to his striking appearance. He was very tall, had long luscious hair and a very well defined physique not to mention his peculiar accent and… he answered his own question, didn't he?

"Ok, I get why, but when did it start?"

"Probably when he untied me and then carried me bravely out of the forest!" She recalled with a dreamy look on her face.

"So basically the instant you met him." Dipper summarized, not at all surprised by the fact. It was a very Mabel-like thing to do. But if that was the truth, then there was something that didn't make sense. "If you have liked him since then, why is it that you haven't… you know… acted like with your other crushes?" Just like he had said before she met 'Norman', Mabel was in her "Boy-Crazy" phase, with a lot of emphasis in the "Crazy" part.

"Because…" She said a little more collected than before. "He is… out of my league…" she admitted sounding sad about it.

"Out of your league?!" Dipper repeated not believing the words coming out of her sister's mouth. Well, not the part about Joseph being out of her league, that was somewhat obvious; no, what surprised him the most was the fact that she was admitting it. It was SO unlike her that he was honestly taken aback by it. "So you know it will go unrequited." Maybe this was a sign that Mabel was maturing out of her "phase".

"For now!" She proclaimed doing a 180° from her mood from before. The change was so sudden Dipper wondered how she avoided the sheer whiplash from the turn. "But things will surely change! All I need is a different approach!"

"What do you mean?"

"Silly Dippy!"She moved her head from side to side. "One does not climb a mountain the same way you climb a tree."She said sagely, probably reciting something she read on a fortune cookie once.

"Huh?"

"I mean I can't do the same things I do with other boys with Joseph." She explained. "They simply wouldn't work!"

Dipper couldn't help but roll his eyes. Her usual tactics haven't worked once before. Well, only if you omitted Norman, but he turned out to be a bunch of Gnomes desperate to find a Queen.

"Uh huh… So…?"

"I just need to play it smart and be charming as ever!"She said confidently enough.

"No, I mean, so what are you gonna sculpt now?" Dipper decided that he had heard enough and wanted to change topics. If Mabel wanted to try and get Joseph to like her, then that was her business. Not to mention, he was sure that when the next boy comes along she would jump bandwagons like she always does.

"Like I said, I wanted to make a wax statue of Jojo, but that would be too direct!" Not to mention creepy. "That's why I need to find something else to sculpt."

"How about a member of our family?" Dipper suggested. It was a sensible option since getting the exact measurements of a celebrity would've been difficult to acquire.

As if it was a sign from up above, Stan walked into the room with the top part of his Mr. Mystery outfit but not his bottom half. "Kids have you seen my pants?"

Somehow that was inspirational enough for Mabel to decide to work on a Wax Statue of Grunkle Stan.

『x-x-x』

Joseph covered his face as he yawned.

He was sitting behind a table working the Tickets to let visitors in to The Grand Re-Opening of the Gravity Falls Wax Museum.

Honestly he didn't get why make a big deal out of it. I mean, sure he understood the event on a business perspective; loud celebration and publicity was sure to make people turn their heads and come by. But if the Museum closed down before for lack of interest, why would this time be any different; especially when they only had one new statue to show off to the public?

Then again, the Museum was closed for so long that people in the town might as well have forgetten all about it.

"So boring…" He complained as he put his hands behind his head. "Why would so many people come to this Re-Opening anyways?"Despite just asking that question to himself just to break the monotony of the silence, he received an answer from a fellow teenager besides him.

"Who knows?" Wendy shrugged. "He probably bribed them or something."

"Blackmailed most likely." Joseph sighed tiredly. "He told me that if I didn't stay for this, then he wouldn't pay me for the whole day." And the cheapskate wasn't paying him for the extra hours of work.

"Well, he bribed me." Wendy smirked as she pulled out a 5 dollar bill.

"What?!" That cheap bastard!

Unfortunately Joseph couldn't confront Stan about it, because the opening ceremony just started and he was addressing the crowd.

"As you know, I always bring the people of this town novelties and befuddlements, the likes which the world, has never known. But enough about me; Behold … me!" The showman then pulled out a white sheet and revealed his very own Wax Statue. The public was, of course, less than thrilled by this revelation, despite the fanfare produced by Soos and his keyboard. "Now a word from our very own Mabel-angelo!"

"It's just Mabel." The artist of the not-so well received statue said as she took the microphone and directed her words to the public. "Thank you for coming! I made this sculpture with my own two hands! It's covered in my blood, sweat, tears, and other fluids!" She announced much to the disgust of the public. "Yeah. I will now take questions!"

Just like with any Q&A there was always this weirdo who just made strange and very out of place questions. Case and point: Old Man McGucket, the local kook and sometimes mad scientist genius. He was the one responsible for the mechanical monster on the lake from a few days ago.

"Are the wax figures alive? And follow-up question, can I survive the wax-man uprising?"

"Um...Yes! Next question!"

The next person to ask their question was a short man with glasses and a big mustache, wearing a stereotypical newspaper reporter outfit with overalls and a fedora hat. "Toby Determined, Gravity Falls Gossiper. Do you really think this constitutes a wonder of the world?"

Before Mabel had the opportunity to answer, Stan cut it. "Your microphone's a turkey baster, Toby." That statement alone was enough to undermine his question and him as a person; which in turn made him sit back into his chair utterly humiliated.

"It certainly is…"

"Next question!" Stan asked hurrying things along.

A tall and certainly good-looking woman with long Brown hair stood up. "Shandra Jimenez, a real reporter." She said giving Toby the stink eye, before continuing. "Your flyers promised free pizza with admission to this event. Is this true?"

At the mention of Pizza, and the lack of it up to this point was making the crowd get a little unruly. Apparently people came to the event not for the Wax Museum but for the quote on quote free pizza.

Having his lie exposed, caused Stan to become completely silent…for just a few seconds. "That was a typo." Yes, that was the best excuse he came up with. "Good night, everyone!" The man then threw a gas pellet unto the ground as a distraction to run towards the ticket stand were Joseph and Wendy were and took the box with the admission fee money with him.

It was only luck that prevented the audience from forming and angry mob with torches and pitchforks to chase after Stan and make him pay for his lies. Even so, the angriest amongst them took their frustrations on some of the property around the Shack.

"Well that happened…" Wendy tried to laugh the whole thing off, especially after seeing her dad, Manly Dan, break a wooden post with just one punch.

"Sneaky bastard…" Joseph grumbled under his breath. He so wanted to be part of the lynch mob that somehow didn't form. "Tell Soos, I went back to his house."He wasn't going to stay after this sh*tshow.

"Hey, wait!" Wendy tried to stop the Joestar, but he was far too mad to pay her any mind.

"Stan is going to pay!"

く==ToBeContinued==

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Author Notes:

Sorry, I had to cut this chapter short. But right now I'm a little busy because last night someone burglarized the neighbors' house and we are helping them deal with this situation.

I hope you like it, and next time, the Murder happens! And the investigation starts.