Beware the Banshee
Chapter 6
A farmer in a pickup truck loaded with baskets of rhubarb and asparagus drove to within twenty feet of the animals and got out to ask what was going on. "Don't know," Stan said. "They just stand here."
"Spooky," the farmer said. "They's things in that valley ain't natural. I always said it." He climbed back in his truck. "I'll come back later on," he said, and then he jockeyed the truck and headed back the way he had come.
A few minutes after that they heard the clatter of Soos's Jeep. He pulled off on the shoulder and got out on the far side of the animal blockade. "Whoa, dudes! This is like uncanny! What do they want?"
"We don't know!" Dipper yelled. "Stan and I are going to try to come to you."
"Dawg, there's like bears in there!"
"Yeah, we won't hurt 'em," Stan said. He turned and handed his car keys to Stanford. "Get behind the wheel, Poindexter. I wanna see you turn around before we start. Anything happens, don't worry about us but dig out for Hirschville and don't slow down 'til you get there."
Ford didn't reply, but he did get behind the wheel, start the car, and back-and-forth until he'd made a 180 turn. He sat there with the engine rumbling.
Stan said, "Ya ready, Dipper?"
"Guess so."
"Let's do it."
They went single file, Stan leading the way. Once more the animals peacefully stepped aside, closing again as they passed. Stan kept muttering: "Thanks, deer. 'Scuse me, Mr. Bear. Nice-lookin' pup ya got there, Mrs. Fox."
Dipper followed silently, thinking If any of them answer, I'm gonna panic! But then again, No, I won't. We're actually stepping into the valley. This is Gravity Falls now!
Once they were behind the animals, Stan turned and waved, and Stanford put the El Diablo in gear. The long-nosed ruby-red auto with the white convertible top vanished around a curve.
For a few moments the animals stood, ears twitching. Then the geese filtered out from the crowd, ran a few steps down the highway, and took to the air. As if that were a signal, the bears lumbered off one way, the foxes melted into the underbrush on the other side, and the other animals calmly separated, all going their separate ways.
"Dawgs," Soos said, "that was like awesome! Wouldn't it be funny if some dude came runnin' right now an' asked us if we'd seen his performing zoo animals?" He looked hopefully all around. "Naw, guess they were just regular weird animals. Get in, Pines dudes, and we'll go back to the Shack."
It took them about twenty minutes to get there. Everyone seemed to be just standing around. "What's shakin'?" Stan asked.
Wendy said, "Nothin' at all, man. For the last hour there's been like no business. No cars, no buses, nothing."
"Because the animals were blocking the road," Dipper said. "Nobody could get through into the valley."
"Yeah, but they're like gone now, Wendy," Soos said. "Like, boosh! And they mysteriously just disappeared by walkin' away."
"Where's Grunkle Ford?" Mabel asked. She was wearing a tangerine-colored sweater with either a rising or a setting sun, yellow with orange bars, knitted into it.
"The animals wouldn't let Ford through," Dipper said. "They didn't attack but just wouldn't get out of his way."
Wendy frowned. "That's, like, bizarre. I mean, even for the Falls!"
"Well-p," Stan said, "for the time bein', I say we just hole up here for a while. We should hear from Ford soon. Meantime, is there anything to eat? Dip an' me haven't had a bite since breakfast."
Abuelita obliged with some hamburgers—"Yeah, put some of them jalapeños on mine," Stan said.
With a big smile, Soos's grandmother loaded it with not only jalapeños but also a few habaneros. Dipper opted for just lettuce and tomato. They also had a couple of Pitt Colas.
Stan took a huge bite, his face turned fiery red, and tears streamed from his eyes. "Now, that's a burger!" he said. He took another man-sized chomp.
"You eat like a macho hombre," Abuelita said approvingly.
"Hey, Soos!" Stan called. "How'd you like it if I married your grandmother an' became your gramps? That cool?"
"Why, sure, Mr. Pines," Soos said.
"I would sooner swallow a porcupine backwards," Abuelita said with a sweet smile.
"Ah-hah-hah! Feisty! I like that." One of the habaneros fell out onto the counter, and he scooped it up and chomped it. "Burny goodness! Second thought, though, if I proposed to you, Sheila would kill me. But you're the champion cook of these parts, Mrs. Ramirez."
"Gracias," she said. "When you finish, I vacuum your face."
Dipper had just eaten the last bite of his burger when his phone rang. He didn't recognize the number. "Hello?"
"It's Stanford, Dipper," his great-uncle said. "Listen: I'm in the Overlook, room 217. My cell phone is charging now. But I've been thinking, and this shouldn't wait. Could you go outside and check something for me?"
"Sure."
Dipper headed out, and Wendy tagged along. "Just in case," she said. "If some weird crap is comin' down, I wanna have your back."
"Thanks." Into the phone, Dipper said, "I'm outside now, on the front porch."
"Can you check and see if the unicorn hair we glued down is still there? It's important that it be in an unbroken line."
"OK." Dipper traced it and then reported, "Grunkle Ford? It's in place all around the original Shack, but the guest room and snack bar add-ons don't have it."
"No, of course they wouldn't." Ford sounded disappointed. "If only we had a little more of the hair—"
"Wait a minute." Dipper said to Wendy, "Please go and get Mabel to come out."
"What are you saying, Dipper? I didn't get that."
"I think Mabel may still have some of the hair. Wendy's gone to bring her out."
And when Mabel came out, she confirmed what Dipper said: "Oh, yeah, I got a pretty good skein of it in with my sewing and knitting things."
Ford asked Dipper to have her to go get it and bring some glue. Then she, Wendy, and Dipper attached it, overlapping the original strands. There was more than enough to surround the new parts of the building.
"Good," Ford said. "Now, this is important: After Weirdmageddon, the moonstones that completed the wards had all shattered. Do you know what moonstones look like?"
Dipper said, "No, not really."
"No matter. Listen carefully: Go down into my lab and work area. In the storage room next to the portal room, you'll find an old-fashioned wood pharmacist's cabinet with a hundred and forty-four small drawers. Drawer number fifty-three should contain a dozen or so moonstones. I want you to get three and bury them about six inches deep in these exact places. Get a pen and paper."
Wendy cooperated, but Mabel went to herd Waddles and Widdles into the Shack. "They have to be protected, too!" she said. Dipper could hear her reasoning with Abuelita, who had a definite prejudice against sharing living space with a pig or two.
Wendy and Dipper used a tape measure to pinpoint the distances Ford had specified, and then a garden trowel to dig down exactly six inches. "Ford was right," Dipper said when he scooped out the first one and the trowel grated on small fragments of a pale stone marbled with blue. "This one's broken to bits." He dug out the pieces and then planted the replacement, a pretty round stone that did sort of shine in the dark like a mottled full moon.
They finished burying all three, and Dipper called Ford back to report. "OK, done. What will this do?"
"It's a powerful protection against all malevolent magic," Ford told him. "It was strong enough to withstand Bill Cipher himself. Frankly, I don't think it would keep a banshee away—as I explained, they're not harmful, but only seek to warn us. However, it may well ward off whatever the banshee is warning us about—if it's a magical or supernatural threat."
"It may be some ordinary danger, though," Dipper said.
"Yes, there is that. Still, it's wise to take all precautions."
"Dude!" Wendy said. "Here comes the Greenway bus! We're back in business."
Ford promised to be in touch if he could think of any possible threat and ways to guard against it. "If you hear the wailing again tonight," he said, "call me immediately, no matter what the time. Any piece of information may be vital."
Wendy and Dipper hurried inside just ahead of the flood of tourists, who seemed unaware of anything odd on the highway. Soos, in full Mr. Mystery attire, took out a tramload of gawkers along the Mystery Trail, while Stan donned a spare fez and hawked souvenirs. "I wish Gideon were here," he said as the tourists chattered and browsed. "We need a Wolf Boy with this crowd. Dip, I don't suppose you—"
"That would be a no," Dipper told him firmly.
"Huh. Ya know, that Pacifica would be a big hit. Fur leggin's, maybe an itty bitty fur bikini top—"
"Yeah, good luck with that," Dipper said. "And don't ask Mabel!"
A woman said, "Excuse me." She was holding up a gnarled twig. "The sign says this is palo santo. Is this the South American healing wood?"
"It sure is! Fresh from Peru! Smell that piny-minty-lemony medicinal aroma," Stan said enthusiastically.
"Then I can expect it to cure colds?"
"Oh, lady," Stan said, "I one hundred per cent guarantee that you can expect it to cure just about anything. One hundred per cent!"
Dipper joined Mabel behind the counter as Wendy and Stan worked the room. They made constant sales, including the twig—for which the lady forked over twenty dollars. "I can't believe that Stan just sold that poor lady a stick," he said.
"We have a talented Grunkle, Broseph," Mabel said, ringing up a fossil ammonite and tossing in a bumper sticker for free.
The bus left after forty minutes. During the lull, Mabel counted up nearly eight hundred dollars in sales. "Man!" Stan said. "Soos is like an idiot savant! If I coulda made that much every day the Shack was open, I coulda got enough material to fix that portal in like three years instead of thirty!"
"Soos is a lot less scary than you are, Grunkle Stan," Mabel told him.
He stared at her. "You really think I'm scary, Pumpkin?"
"Terrifying," Mabel said.
Wendy nodded. "I'll go with that."
"Yeah," Dipper said. "Pretty much."
"Well!" Stan said, standing straighter. "I'll take that as a compliment!"
"That's our Grunkle," Mabel said with a chuckle.
Later, business wasn't quite as brisk—but that was normal for the afternoons—and when the Shack closed for business at six, Wendy phoned her dad. She walked outside during the conversation—Dipper thought that if Manly Dan were just a bit louder, she wouldn't have needed a phone—and he stood on the porch while she walked around the parking lot.
She finally came back, rolling her eyes. "He ain't happy," she said, "but I told him I gotta stay over tonight. Dad and my brothers can go to the diner or order pizza. Man, I get so tired of cookin' for that crew and then cleanin' up afterward. My brothers act like if their hands touched dishwater, they'd dissolve."
"How's Junior? Is he still at the lumber camp?"
"Oh, yeah, workin' for Steve. He comes home at least every other weekend, though, so I can do his nasty, stinky laundry." She sighed. "He's gonna be another Dad. Ornery an' cranky an' gets into fights over nothing. Wish he'd find some woman who'd stand up to him an' marry her. He could use some sense if there was only somebody to beat it into him."
After dinner that evening, they all sat on the porch. Dipper brought his guitar down and played a few familiar tunes—not rock, but folk stuff, "Down in the Valley" and "Greensleeves" and things like that.
"Real nice, Dipper," Mabel said.
"I'm not all that good," Dipper said. "I keep making dumb mistakes, especially when there's people listening."
Mabel said, "Dip's been writing songs, too!"
"None are finished yet," Dipper said. He took the guitar back inside and put it away.
They watched a little TV afterwards. Then Wendy took the guest room and Mabel came up to the attic for a sleepover. "I guess it's OK," Stan said. "Just don't tell your mom you guys shared a room."
"We did when we went down to Dipper's track meets," Mabel pointed out. "All four of us. Jeeze, people have dirty minds if they think—"
"It's OK, Mabel," Dipper said.
In the attic it seemed like old times. "Remember all those splinters I got that first day?" Mabel asked.
"Yeah, you pasted them in your scrapbook!"
"I miss this attic. How's the Invisible Wizard?"
"Still in the closet."
"Yeah, you wanna be careful if he ever comes out," Mabel said.
"You goofball!"
"You dork!"
They laughed together. Then Mabel asked, "Dipper? Do you really think somebody's gonna—you know, die?"
"Not if we can help it, Sis," Dipper said.
Mabel spread a blanket on the floor next to her old bed. "Waddles," she said, "you sleep here and keep me safe!"
Waddles, now a full-grown hog whose weight made the floorboards creak, obligingly settled down. Mabel put his much smaller daughter, Widdles, into bed with her. "And I'll protect this cutie myself," she said.
Dipper turned off the lantern. "'Night, Mabel."
"Dipper?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you ever wish we'd stayed twelve and the summer never ended?"
"No."
"Sometimes I do."
"I know you do," he said into the darkness. "But you're growing up good, Mabel."
"Dipper?"
"Yeah?"
"So are you."