The Big Con
Chapter 2: Of Ghosts and Goblins
Dipper borrowed a pen and pad from behind the counter and wrote down the Admiral's name and address. "Tonight? Uh, sure," he said. "I'll try my best. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I'll bring everything that I need. And everyone. Dinner? Uh, sure. Seven? OK, I'll find a way to get there. Yes—" he felt a little silly. "He hung up," Dipper explained to Wendy, replacing the receiver.
"What's goin' on, man?" Wendy asked. "Sounds all woo-ooo-ooo." She wriggled her fingers and grinned. "This another mission, dude?"
"Maybe," Dipper said. He quickly explained about Admiral D.D. Skipper and showed Wendy the address. "He wants us there at seven, and he's asking us to stay at least until midnight. He claims a ghost almost always shows up then."
"No way!" Wendy said. She glanced at what he'd written. "Oh, man, this is like 'way out. Almost out of the valley. Twelve miles at least, Dipper. You're not gonna ride your bike that far in the dark. Too many creatures out on these lonely roads at night."
"I guess I could call Grunkle Stan and ask if he could drive us. Or maybe Grunkle Ford would be better—though he'd take over the investigation."
"Chill, dude, I got your back," Wendy said. "Hey, this is Saturday. My dad and my brothers always go bowling over in Roseburg and never get back before, like, daybreak. If I can tag along, I'll drive you guys over. I always enjoy these mystery missions of yours."
"Great," Dipper said.
"No sweat, Dip. I gotta tell you, though—after the convenience store, I'm not too stoked about ghosts. This one isn't gonna put us through the mill again, is it?"
"I don't think so," he told her. "I'm gonna read up on them, but I don't think this one is a Cat 10 or anywhere close to it. It seems to be a reproaching spirit, not a vengeful one."
"Dude, you like totally lost me. Uh, oh, here comes a caravan! 'Scuse me, Dip, gotta get busy. Talk to you later!"
Six vehicles—three cars, a van, a pickup truck, and a school bus that looked as if it had been converted into a camper against its will, all with California plates, had jounced into the lot, and from them spilled a crowd of people who looked so much alike—fat, dozy-eyed, and moseying—that you just knew this had to be a family reunion.
So it proved, for the first four people in, a granny and gramps, a middle-aged woman, and a toddler about four, all wore T-shirts that proclaimed them members of the O'Doniphon Family. Soos, rather natty in black suit and bow tie, came in to welcome them and escort them on the museum tour—twenty bucks a head, babies and tots up to four free, and "Conjoined twins half price each, dudes."
It was corny, but it got a laugh from the tourists. There were about twenty-five of them, only five of them under four, and all but three of the rest paid the entrance fee not just dutifully but eagerly. "I'm Mr. Mystery!" Soos proclaimed. "Follow me into a world of enchantment and wonder!" He threw open a door, walked in, immediately walked out again and said, "Broom closet, dawgs. Next door."
Dipper groaned a little. Soos pulled the same stunt on each tour, and it always got a laugh. But seeing the big guy enjoy himself so much made Dipper chuckle a little, too. As the remaining O'Doniphons began to browse the shop, a tour bus pulled up. Knowing Wendy wasn't going to have time to talk for at least an hour, Dipper climbed the stair up to the attic, pulled out his set of Journals (yeah, yeah, they had been incinerated, but Mabel and Dipper did a favor for Blendin Blandin, the time traveler, who found a clever way to duplicate the originals, yatta yatta, there's a story about it somewhere).
Most of the material on ghosts was in Volume Three, but the first two had some good pointers on tracking down things like sprites and sidhes, independent vapors and Jamaican duppies (they roll along deserted roads and travelers can tell when one passes because they feel a blast of heat), Indonesian penanggalans, sort of zombie-like except their heads can detach and fly around, looking for victims whose blood the ghost drinks. The sketch of one of these was pretty terrible, since not only the head flies—the creature's stomach and guts trail along under the head, drippy and oozy and supposedly cold to the touch. There was the Inuit Wendigo, a ghost as thin as a sheet of paper—you could only see it if it was facing you, because edge-on there wasn't enough of it to perceive.
Reading thoughtfully and clicking his pen—an old habit—Dipper made mental notes but wrote nothing down. He didn't have enough information to form any theories. But maybe at midnight—just possibly . . . .
"Hiyo!" The bellowed word came so unexpectedly that Dipper, who had dozed over the Journals, yipped and fell backward in his chair. Mabel, of course, just coming by to see what was up. She helped Dipper get back upright, scanned the back of his head and said that outside of a lump there was nothing wrong.
"Maybe," Dipper growled, "but it's the inside of the lump that hurts. Hey, you want to go on a mystery mission with Wendy and me tonight?"
"You're sure I won't be in the way?" Mabel said, teasingly. "Oh, Dipper, I'm so scared! Hold me tight! Here, Wendy, I got you. I'll kiss you to still your fears. Mm, mmm, mmm-mmm!"
Dipper swatted her with a pillow. "Hey, Sis, if that was gonna happen, I would definitely not invite you!"
"Okay, I was kidding," Mabel said. "So I'll pack my grappling hook—and I want to bring Waddles!"
"I can't think of a thing that Waddles could contribute."
"He has a keen analytic mind," Mabel pointed out.
"Well, right now he's analyzing yesterday's undershorts by chewing on them!"
"Come on, Waddles," Mabel coaxed, pulling the pig from beneath Dipper's bed, although since the previous summer Waddles had porked up so much that he could no longer get all the way under. "C'mon, Dip, you know Waddles wants to get re-acquainted with his old home town."
"It's fine with me," Dipper said. "As long as Wendy doesn't mind him riding in her car."
As it turned out, Wendy had no particular problem. "Hey, some of the boys I've been in cars with, he can only be an improvement, believe me. You buckled in, Mabes? Here, hold him tight."
Because the old Dodge Dart was currently lacking a back seat, they all had to squeeze in the front. Mabel was first in, and when Waddles clambered up beside her, she said, "On my lap, little fella!"
And then she said, "Wah! Whoa! Off my lap, off, off, off, off! You're crushing me!"
"Face it, dude," Wendy said, "Waddles is no longer a lap pig. He must weigh, like, a hundred pounds by now!"
"Considering everything," Mabel said after she had urged Waddles out of the car—he seemed just as happy outside as inside, really—"I think his role is to remain here at headquarters and coordinate any intel we send back."
Waddles grunted.
"See? He agrees with me!" Mabel said. "Dipper, get in quick and let's go before he climbs aboard again and starts to eat the upholstery."
They left him happily ambling around the parking lot, nosing up little fragments of food dropped by the many tourists who'd passed through that day. It was a little after six when they left the Shack.
Wendy drove more conservatively with Dipper and Mabel aboard, and it took close to twenty-five minutes to go twelve miles and a bit. "It's outside the weirdness bubble," Dipper said as they crossed an old bridge over the river.
"So this Admiral guy didn't get trapped in Weirdmageddon," Wendy said. "Bummer. Anybody who wasn't inside the bubble didn't know Gravity Falls was, like, wiped off the face of the map for—how long did that last, anyway?"
"Seemed like a week," Mabel said. "I was in my bubble for at least that long."
"Yeah, but when it all ended, remember we found out it was still a week until our birthday. Bill had frozen time or something," Dipper said.
"Well, ya know what they say, dude," Wendy replied.
They all chorused, "Never mind all that!"
Then they rounded a bend and Wendy said, "Oh, man! I never paid any attention to that place. That the address?"
"That's it," Dipper said, staring out the passenger window.
It was a rambling house behind a high brick fence. He couldn't see much of it, but from what he could see—
"That's just the place to have a ghost," he muttered.
Maybe even a Category Ten.