Beware the Banshee

Chapter 16

Though time moved slowly, its passing gnawed at them as long as they could do nothing but wait. About three in the afternoon, though, Mabel rushed into the dining room, where Ford, Stan, Wendy, and Dipper were going over their experiences that morning in hopes of spotting some angle.

Then Mabel, T.K. at her side, came running in to report that they'd solved at least one puzzle. "Hey, guys! It wasn't 'vossen' that Russ said! It was 'foxen!'"

"Huh?" Dipper asked.

"Tell 'em!" Mabel said, pushing T.K. forward. His eyes darting nervously, he punched his round glasses back up on his nose. His apologetic smile flickered like a candle in a breeze as he stammered, "We-well, th-that's what I think, at least. Actually 'vossen' is a real cognate word in Dutch, but in Belgium it's, well, it's a very rude term."

"Yeah, we kinda doped that out. Typical," Stan grunted. "All them hot Belgian waffles got nothin' better to do than to think up new dirty words."

T.K. looked uncertain, but Ford said quietly, "Go on, son."

"Well, the Irish term for foxes, plural I mean, is sionnaigh, but there's also a little-known ancient sort of Scots-Irish-English pidgin language, and back around the tenth century, 'foxen' meant a special kind of foxes. Plural again. It's a word of, I guess, respect? Like the important foxes, or the strong foxes."

"Sionnaigh," Ford murmured. "T.K., could 'foxen' possibly mean 'rulers of foxes?'"

"Um . . . yeah, I think so. That would be . . . uh . . . a possible connotation," T.K. said. Everyone was staring at him, and he squirmed, looking as if he wanted to apologize for being alive. "See, I—well, I want to be a linguistic scholar, and, um. At school they call me the 'word nerd,' he said. "Be-because I'm so fascinated with languages."

"You seem to be doin' pretty good, kid," Stan said with a grin.

"Yes, thank you, T.K. You know, what you say makes a lot of sense." Ford turned to Mabel. "Would you go out—not into the yard, just on the porch—and call and see if Russ is anywhere around? It may be vitally important to speak to him."

And Mabel tried—they heard her yelling for Russ on front, back, and side porches and also from out of the windows up on the attic floor for about ten minutes—but no answer came. However, she clattered down the stairs and said, "Guys, come up to the attic. I think you ought to see this!"

They crowded upstairs. Through the bedroom window they could see at an angle the bluffs far across the treetops. "Watch," she said. "See? There it goes!"

"Whoa, what was that, some kinda explosion?" Stan asked.

"No, I don't think so," Ford told him. "I'm going to get my binoculars. I wish we had a clearer view."

"Roof time!" Wendy said.

"Yeah!" Dipper hadn't meant to yell. "I mean—well, you've been up there already, great-uncle Ford. You know."

"Good suggestion," Ford said. "Maybe I won't fall off!"

Ford went downstairs and then to the basement, re-emerging with a somewhat battered and very long pair of binoculars, at least a foot from eyepiece to objective lens. "Naval surplus," he explained. "It's about the strongest you can find, 20-50x100."

"English?" Stanley asked.

"It magnifies the image twenty times, with a zoom up to fifty times. The objective lenses—the big ones in the front, Stanley—are 100 millimeters in diameter."

He slung the binoculars around his neck, then climbed up to the trap door, Dipper and Wendy following on the ladder. He pushed open the trap door, then helped Dipper and Wendy through. They had to lean on the steep-pitched roof to hold their balance as Ford said, "I'd say my best choice would be to lean over the peak of the roof, holding on with my elbows. Then I can steady the image."

"Go for it, dude," Wendy said.

They clambered up and lay against the hot redwood shingles on the stomachs, Wendy and Dipper flanking Ford. Dipper shaded his eyes. "I'm not sure what we're looking for—whoa! That, way out there?"

"Trees falling," Ford said, first finding the target, then peering through the binoculars. "Three or four trees, as far as I can see. Big dust cloud. Not an explosion, but a collapse. It's still miles away. My guess is that it's still tunneling underground, and it's moving fairly slowly, no more than a slow walking pace."

"But still it's comin'," Wendy said.

"Yes, I'm afraid so."

"We'd better get ready," Dipper said.

"Agreed."

They climbed down again to find Mabel on her phone, and a moment later another little piece of the puzzle clicked into place: "Grunkle Ford!" she said. "I've been talking to Grenda, and she thinks she knows what that thing is!"

"What?" Ford asked.

"Just a sec, I gotta tell everybody," Mabel said into the phone. Then "Dipper! Wendy! You remember this! When that monster charged the Shacktron and shoved us way back, but then we stopped it and went to full power?"

"Yeah!" Wendy said. "I'd been, like, ridin' eyeball bats before it ran into us! We like grabbed hold of it, put the Shacktron up to full power, and swung it around and around and then—"

"Threw it miles away!" Dipper said. "And it flew off in the direction of Needle Falls! It crashed down like—like a meteor! There was an explosion and everything. I do remember!"

"One of Bill's henchmen, then! What kind of creature was it?" Ford asked eagerly.

Dipper said, "I . . . didn't see it. Mabel was keeping look-out."

Wendy and Dipper looked at Mabel. She waved her arms. "It was like if a purple gorilla and a loaf of grape-flavored bread had a really nasty baby!"

"Also," Wendy added, "it was wearin' like a little tiny party hat. Clown hat kinda deal. You know, the kind that looks like a cone!"

"It's not in the Journals," Dipper said. "I think I'd recognize it from that description."

"No, no," Ford muttered, looking concerned. "I ran across something like that, but it was after I'd been pulled through the Portal. I think—I'm afraid—it just may be an interdimensional murderer and thug, the Being Whose Name Must Never Be Said!"

"Whoa," Wendy said. "What do they call him for short?"

"Xanthar," Ford told her. "Whoops! I said it. Shouldn't have done that, but I'm exhausted." He sank onto the sofa. "If I'm right, it's one of Bill's oldest henchmen. Nearly mindless, capable of scheming and hatred rather than logical thought, incredibly strong, driven by negative emotions. And if I recall—I discovered this during my exile in other dimensions, mind, when I had no Journal to record my impressions—it comes from one of the worlds in the Mu 09 dimension. That means its molecular make-up is quite different from Bill's—or from any life form that has ever existed on Earth."

"How does that help us?" Dipper asked.

Ford shook his head. "It doesn't. But I'll think about it. And I'll adjust all the destabilizers so they'd have an increased effect against Mu-type chemistry. Right now that's all I can come up with. However, this might possibly be worth knowing: The Mu dimension suns are strongly red-shifted—daylight on every planet in that reality ranges from a very dim and faint orange to a blood-red hue. Illumination and some warmth, but not to compare with stars in our reality. Earth's sun shines in a completely different spectrum, which would be physically painful to a Mu-creature—and that could explain why it avoids the daylight."

"Wait, wait," Mabel said. She spoke into her phone: "Sorry for neglecting you. Thanks, Grenda! No, no, don't come over. Tell Candy, too. Right now we've got a situation. Really, it's better if you don't, 'cause it's not the kinda thing you can punch out. Tell you about it tomorrow. Thanks, we'll need some good luck. Yeah, you too!" She broke the connection and then looked up, her eyes wide and fearful. "Guys! When the sun sets, that thing can come out from underground!"

"Yes," Ford agreed. "I'm afraid it will."

"But—all the forest animals! Sev'ral Timez! Russ is out there, too!"

"It won't be stealthy, and if they avoid its path, they should be all right," Ford assured her. "It has a focus and it's coming straight for us. Especially since somebody unwisely spoke its name."

"Dude, that was you," Wendy pointed out.

Ford sighed. "I'm afraid so. Between the two of us, Stan isn't always the screw-up!"

"Hah!" Stan, a can of Pitt Cola in his hand, came in, wearing only a vest-type undershirt and striped boxes. His legs had practically been mummified in Band-Aids. "'Bout time you admitted that!"

"I make mistakes, Stanley," Ford said, pushing his glasses up to rub his eyes. "I acknowledge that."

"Yeah, dude," Wendy said. "But hey, what about you, Stan? Correctin' my grammar when we were about to be, like, bulldozed or burned to a crisp! You were, like, tryin' to be like Stanford. You oughta admit that!"

"Correcting grammar?" Ford asked with a lopsided smile. "You, Stanley?"

"Pot and kettle, smart guy! Hey, I was tryin' to relieve the tension. Besides, that's about the only rule of grammar I can even remember, except for 'I before E except sometimes when it's the other way around.'"

Stanford chuckled. "Yes, I remember making that mistake—correcting someone's grammar—when it really wasn't a good time. I guess we're closer than either of us really admits."

"Yeah, or wants to! So fill me in—I overheard a little of that. What did you find out, and how does it help us?"

"Very little and probably not very much," Ford said, but he and the others started to explain.

Away from the bluffs and away from the stone the burrowing became easier. The will to destruction that burned in the creature functioned as its compass, focusing on a spot far away, but not so far that it could never be reached. Straight. The important thing was to keep going straight, cutting through dirt, through tree roots, through every impediment.

Above it, weakened trees, hundreds of years old, gave way and fell to the ground, their branches clutching empty air, birds scattering from the branches. In its path, small underground creatures, chipmunks, rabbits, even burrowing owls, either fled down their tunnels or perished as it drew near, its aura stealing the life from them without the monstrosity's even quite touching them.

It pushed the bodies aside. It did not feed in the earthly sense. It had no mouth. It thrived on energy—and during the years buried under the rock fall that its crash to earth had caused, it had drawn on heat from deep in the earth.

It could not burn. Its flesh and bone were not combustible in an earth atmosphere, and it could withstand any temperature that natural forces could produce. However, it could, and did, absorb energy from heat. Or from chemicals, or lightning. The old Earth adage goes, "What does not kill me makes me stronger."

Its version might have been "What cannot kill me makes me stronger."

There for a time, it held hope—if it could experience any positive emotion, which is doubtful—that its mission might be easily accomplished. It had sensed some of Bill's old adversaries close, coming to it! On the surface, only yards away—

But the sun broke through in stinging shafts when it attempted to burst out and the rocks above it shifted and it had to dive for protection—

Only the light, the hateful light, could hurt it, and light could not kill.

Still, living things avoid pain.

And the light hurt.

It had tried to kill the intruders anyway, tried to trap them beneath rocks or squash them as it made trees fall, had even squandered half of its stored energy in trying to burn them by transforming hardened lava back into steaming, destroying magma.

It had forgotten how fast the little creatures could move through air.

In the light of the sun.

But it had learned during its captivity and slow awakening and recuperation, yes, it had learned.

Daylight does not last forever.

Darkness was coming

Darkness was coming.