Beware the Banshee

Chapter 4

The rest of Monday passed peacefully enough, though nothing particularly exciting happened. Stan called Dipper and said, "My brother the genius gave me like a thirty-second phone call just now, said he was busy examining the whole house with a psychotic kid naked energetic meter or some stupid thing and that it was goin' slow, but he's OK. Asked me to call you."

"Thanks," Dipper said, feeling both relieved that Stan had been in touch with Ford and disappointed that Ford hadn't thought he had time to call Dipper, too. If Ford was scanning for psychic kinetic energy, that meant that at least poltergeist-level activity was still going on in the Westminster house. Maybe an exorcism could resolve the problem. Or maybe not.

Mabel seemed in a better mood. She asked Dipper, "Hey, can we take over the attic Friday night for a sleepover?"

"Who's coming?"

"The usual gang," Mabel said. "Grenda, Candy, Pacifica. Wendy says she can't be there, though. Come on, Dipper! Next time we can go over to Pacifica's, she says."

"Aren't you girls getting old for sleepovers?" he asked.

"Never!"

"OK, OK, sure, we'll swap rooms," he said. Wendy had already invited him over to the Corduroy house that Friday evening for movie night, so he'd miss at least the most raucous part of the girl's socializing. Plus, he probably wouldn't have to have a conversation with Pacifica, whose interactions had a way of turning awkward.

After dinner, while Mabel was again frolicking with her two pigs, Dipper went upstairs, tuned his guitar, and began to strum chords vaguely reminiscent of the old railroad ballad "Casey Jones." When he satisfied himself that he knew the tune, he began to sing the lyrics he had in his head:

Come gather round me and you'll hear me tell

Of a big, brave dude who struggled through hell

The end of the world was called Weirdmageddon,

But Soos heard the call and out he was headin'!

Our man Soos was big and bold,

Not scared of fire nor frightened of cold,

Wanderin' the wastelands when things looked grim,

And many owe their lives to one guy, him!

Handyman Soos!

Bringin' men to safety!

Handyman Soos!

Protecting helpless babes!

Handyman Soos!

All the ladies love him,

They all call him grand,

'Cause Handyman Soos was a fix-it-up man!

At first Dipper giggled, but then he groaned. "Oh, man! Maybe I should just give up songwriting. It's harder than it seems." He thought fleetingly of Wendy and the very first song he'd ever composed on the guitar—the one for her. OK, I'll work on this Soos one, and if I can get it sounding halfway decent, I'll play it for him, and if he likes it—but Soos would like anything. I'll probably never get the nerve to play my song for Wendy.

But anyway he strummed the chords of that one, too, humming the melody, and it didn't sound half as bad as he remembered it. Well, whatever happened, at least his Wendy song didn't have hypnotic suggestions in it and he hadn't ripped it off some death-metal band. He went to bed and read until he fell asleep.

Only to wake up at—he looked blearily at his phone, charging beside the bed—three a.m.? Some noise?

Then he heard it again, a distant high-pitched howl that went on and on, ululating—rising and falling, sounding forlorn. "Coyote," he muttered, remembering that Wendy had mentioned she heard one. He got up to go to the bathroom, and when he came out again, he glanced at the Bill Cipher-like stained-glass window.

Something shapeless fluttered just outside.

Owl? No, it hung in the air but wavered.

Dipper took a step toward the window, and whatever it was either shot away at high speed or else vanished. Curious, he went to the window and opened it. Dark outside—a setting moon lay in an aura of its own light, cast through a high, thin cloud layer, but few stars showed. Nothing. Maybe he'd only seen a reflection or something—

The far-off howl began again.

Dipper shivered and hastily closed the window. Maybe it was a coyote, off in the hills somewhere, but it sounded so much like a heartbroken woman letting all her grief and anger and fear out in a prolonged, heartbroken, wailing shriek.

"Wow," Dipper whispered. He felt goosebumps on his arms. It was the single weirdest sound he had ever heard in his life.

He started back to his bedroom, and then the pounding began. What the heck? Somebody at the door?

Well, at least he was wearing pajamas this time. He hurried downstairs and met Mabel in her bathrobe and slippers, heading for the side door. "Who is it?" she asked.

"One way to find out." Dipper turned on the outside light and carefully opened the door.

"Russ?" Mabel asked.

Dipper blinked. The boy he'd seen in the bonfire clearing stood there, shielding his eyes from the overhead light. His coppery hair glistened—was it wet? It sure looked that way. He asked,"Mabel, are you all right?" in a thin, light voice.

"Huh? Sure I am, except for being all sleepy! What's wrong?"

The boy's eyes shifted nervously. He did everything but perk up his ears to show how on edge he was. "I had a bad feeling. Is this—your brother Dipper?"

"Yeah. Dipper, this is Russ. We're gonna wake everybody up!"

"Step out in the yard for a bit, then. Please."

"You come in."

Russ squirmed a little, as if caught between a desire to flee and one to stay. "I can't. My folks wouldn't like it. But please, just for a little. Both of you."

Mabel shrugged. "OK."

Dipper walked out right beside her. Russ led the way and stayed a little apart from them, a bit further than most people would have done. They walked through grass wet with dew—Dipper was barefoot, and despite the warm night, the dew felt cold. They went as far as the low fence around the parking lot, where the porch light gave them just enough light to see each other. "Listen," Russ said in an urgent tone, "something strange has come into the forest. I think it is coming this way. Promise me you'll be careful."

Mabel asked, "About what?"

"I don't know!" the boy said. "Anything strange or unusual!"

"Like being asked to walk out in the yard at three in the morning?" Dipper asked.

Russ shifted from foot to foot, ducking his head. "I'm sorry about that. I don't know what to do, and my folks are no help." Russ shivered. "It's there in the forest, looking for something or someone. Have you heard it?"

"Uh-uh," Mabel said, tilting her head in that why you ackin' so cray-cray way she had.

"Wait," Dipper said. "Heard it? You mean like a howl? Like, like a wolf or coyote?"

"Maybe me—I mean, your ears hear it that way," Russ said. "But believe me, it comes from no living throat." He was so twitchy, stepping from side to side, his head constantly turning as though he feared attack from either side or behind, that Dipper felt a kind of contagious nervousness. "I've known it was there for a few nights. It seems to be coming this way, slowly. I was afraid it might mean you would be hurt. Mabel, I mean."

"A few nights?" Dipper asked. "Howwww did you even know Mabel was going to be here? You never met her before yesterday."

Russ looked downward. "I've seen her before. When she and you walked in the forest. Last summer. I—I liked her from the first. I'm afraid for her."

"Well," Dipper said, "you don't have to worry. We'll take care of her."

"Dipper!" Mabel said. "Be nice!"

Keeping his voice low, Dipper said, "Look, I'm sorry, but before yesterday you never even met him, and now he's worried about you?"

"I should go," Russ said.

"No," Mabel insisted.

"Maybe you'd better," Dipper told him. "OK, if you and Mabel want to talk, fine, but please do it in the daytime, OK? It's too creepy at night."

"Cree . . . py?" Russ asked, sounding the way Dipper suspected he himself did in French class, when all the words to him sounded like "ong."

"Yeah, creepy. You know. Scary," Dipper said. "Weird. Not normal."

"You can come and talk to me," Mabel said. "But Dipper's right. Daytime would be better."

"At the log?" Russ asked, hope in his voice. "Near twilight?"

"That will be fine."

"Then I'll come. I'm sorry," Russ said again. "Dipper, Mabel—I can't tell you what the danger is because I don't know, but it smells wrong, it feels wrong. I don't think the . . . the wailer is trying to hurt you. Maybe to warn you. I think . . . I think someone close to this house . . . will die."

Dipper actually felt Mabel shiver. "OK, Russ, you're creeping me out," she said, sounding as if she meant to make a little joke. But she swallowed. "Seriously," she added.

"I will try to learn more." He actually knelt in the grass, his head lowered.

Mabel reached out and ruffled his hair. "Stop it," she said with some affection. "I appreciate you being my knight in shiny armor and all, but this is a little embarrassing."

"I will speak to you again." Then, without even a hint that he was about to do it, Russ surged to his feet and broke into a run.

"Whoa!" Dipper said. Russ leaped the low fence on this side of the parking lot, then the far side, and then he melted into the night shadows beneath the trees. "He's quick off the block! Come on, let's go in. My feet are freezing."

They slipped back inside, Dipper turned off the porch light, and then he locked the door. Double-checked to make sure he'd locked it.

"Lucky nobody else woke up," he whispered to Mabel.

Of course, on this side of the house a great deal of extraneous noise fought a losing battle with Soos's epic-level snoring. Mabel went back to the guest room, and Dipper walked upstairs. His pajama legs were soaked halfway to his knees, or so they felt, anyway. He took the PJ's off, thought of Wendy coming in to shake him awake, and set the alarm app on his phone to pre-empt that.

Lying in bed, he found sleep elusive. Something about what Russ had said—well, assuming the kid wasn't simply crazy. Crazy people seemed common in Gravity Falls, including those who married and divorced woodpeckers and raccoons. Still—the wailer, Russ had said. Trying to warn us?

Wailer?

"Oh, man," Dipper said, suspicion filling his mind. He turned on the battery-powered lantern, grabbed his laptop, and turned it on. "Come on, come on!" Why wasn't it like in the movies, when the dude switched on a computer and it was already on the Internet?

When the laptop booted, he made sure the wi-fi was working—at least the Shack had a good, strong signal, thanks to Grunkle Stan's splurging on a top-quality modem and router a few years ago.

Dipper opened a browser, then a search engine, and looked for +wail +warning. Nothing. Try "omens of death."

Dipper read about corpse candles, the phantom knock (three sharp knocks on a door during the hours of night, and nobody there when someone answered the knocking), a ghostly funeral passing a house in the night. . .. One more try: "omens of death" +wailing.

And the first item that popped up was "The Wail that Foretells Death: The Banshee."

Dipper had read of banshees before. He even knew they were supposed to be fairies, not the diminutive kind that flitted through a few glens in the Gravity Falls forests, but human-sized, magical creatures. The name came from bean sidhe, an Irish term. Dipper read in the article on his computer that the words actually meant "woman of the hills," and that the hills were fairy mounds of Ireland.

No, the article said, the banshee wasn't the cause of death. Yes, she forewarned a family with her eerie grieving wail of a coming death in the house, most often the death of the owner.

The owner.

Ford had built the Shack as his home!

"Oh, my gosh!" Dipper grabbed his phone and dialed Ford's number. It rang, but went immediately to voice mail, and not even to personalized voice mail, but the machine announcement "You have reached the number . . . ." Dipper waited for the beep and then said, "Grunkle Ford, if you get this, call me back the minute you do, even if it's the middle of the night. It's a matter of life and death!"

Call the hotel, call the hotel—what hotel was it? Had Grunkle Stan mentioned it? He called Stan instead.

"Yah?" the sleepy voice growled. "This better be good."

"Grunkle Stan, I think Ford's in danger," Dipper told him.

"You got a reason?"

When Dipper explained, Stan sighed and asked, "You got a reason other than a coyote howlin' at the moon?"

"More a feeling," Dipper confessed.

Stan sighed. "OK, Dip, I ain't gonna play dumb. You and I know there are weird things around. Includin' Poindexter himself. Let me call his hotel room."

"Call me right back," Dipper said. "Or have him call me. Please."

"OK, OK."

Dipper couldn't lie still or sit still. He paced the attic, fretting, until his phone rang. Stan again. "Did you get him?" he asked.

"No, sorry, kid. They, uh, they say he checked out before midnight."

"But he's not answering his phone!"

"Don't know what to tell you, Dip."

"We have to go down there."

A pause, and then Stan asked, "You really got a feelin' about this?"

"I wouldn't have bothered you if I didn't."

"Okay, kid. Here's what I'll do. Let me see, let me see . . . . shoulda put on my glasses. Computer's already on, let me see. OK, there's a flight direct to San Jose, California Coastal Air, leaves Portland at eleven a.m. I'll fly down an' collect Braniac. How's that?"

"I want to go too." When Stan hesitated, Dipper said, "Grunkle Stan, I've been to the Westminster house. I've dealt with its ghosts. Please. I can help, I know I can."

"OK, OK," Stan said. "Oy, I hate flyin'! I'll pick you up at the Shack at eight sharp, we'll drive to Portland and catch the plane, go and see what trouble Ford's got himself into. That satisfy you?"

"Yeah, thanks. Is there an earlier flight?"

"Naw, couple leave earlier, but these other airlines, you gotta make connections. This one's the fastest to get there. Scheduled to take off at eleven-eleven, gets to San Jose at twelve fifty-one. Half an hour faster than the next best choice. Lemme see. Not half full yet, so we'll grab the tickets at the airport, that'll be easiest. Be ready! Be sure to bring your school ID. Better pack a couple changes of underwear, I guess. It may take us a while to find him."

"I'll be ready."

It was close to four. He lay in bed muttering, "Please be OK, please be OK, please be OK" until he fell asleep.

He woke with fear clenching his throat—but the sound wasn't a banshee, but the alarm tone on his phone. Dipper turned it off, knowing he was going to be a nervous wreck.

But Wendy would be there in ten minutes. The run would keep him occupied. If he could just hold in his anxiety, not alarm her.

He got dressed for the run, knowing he was going to dread every moment of the morning until Stan showed up.

And then he had to survive Stan's driving all the way to Portland.