The Big Con
Chapter 4: The Man Who Wasn't (All) There
From the Journals of Dipper Pines:
Early Sunday morning, June 30: For just a second I was back in the Dusk-to-Dawn, staring at that . . . THING hanging in the ice locker. Eyes and a mouth and brains and, I guess, nerves—
Except this wasn't like that, really. It was a ghost, or at least it looked something like one, glowing pale blue and floating in the air about two feet off the floor . . . but it was less the ghost of a person than—gosh, I don't know if I can even describe it.
OK, it was the floating, unconnected PARTS of a sort of human being, a really weird-looking one with a tiny head and arms and legs that were too long. They were severed, not part of one body at all, but bobbing in the air weirdly. It was like a marionette that had been unstrung and all the pieces were being worked by different puppeteers, who were all blindfolded. The face—I think that was the worst.
The eyes were blank and glowing a greenish-white. No irises or pupils, just the glowing globes—though somehow I KNEW they could see us. The head, well, it looked as if it had been scalped. I don't mean just bald. Well, it WAS bald, but you could also see fragments and peeling bits of flesh, and it looked as if blobs of, I guess, blood were floating just over the raw surface, except they weren't red but that transparent glowing blue shade. Sometimes the face had flesh, and sometimes it was all muscle and sinew and sometimes only a skull, all except for those glowing eyes. They never changed.
The body—the body parts—looked kind of like they had once been clad in a work shirt and jeans. There were no feet—the legs just faded out beneath the knees into a kind of trailing mist.
There was a kind of odor in the air, too, not a stinky one, but sort of oily, I guess, and kind of like the smell you get when you're around high-tension electric wires. And my skin kind of prickled up into goosebumps. All this, turning around, seeing the thing, and reacting, took only a second or so.
Then Mabel grabbed hold of me, tightly, yelling her head off. I guess I yelled a little, too. I mean, it was a horrible-looking thing. Wendy, though, Wendy pushed us behind her and took out her axe all in one smooth move. "Leave my friends alone, ghost dude!"
In a mild voice, Admiral Skipper said, "I admire your spunk, young lady, but that won't really do any good."
"Oh, no? Duck, dudes! I'll check it out for MYSELF!" And she swung the axe as if she were attaching a redwood.
The blade whooshed right through the ghost. Well, that was normal. For a ghost, I mean. Which is abnormal, I suppose. Anyway, it was a good thing that Mabel and I had crouched down when she warned us, because the momentum of Wendy's swing made the axe whirl around above our heads. I heard the hiss of it as it cut the air.
The ghost didn't react at all. It just hovered there for a few seconds, its head bobbing and kind of nodding, its eyes staring at us. Then it started to . . . drift. It moved lazily through the air, like a puff of smoke.
Its parts kept changing—the arms became skeletal before getting back their flesh and shirt. The hand fell apart into a cloud of little bones before re-forming again. For a second you could see the organs in its chest, lungs and heart, and then they were hidden once more. The . . . the jumble of pieces, only approximately in the right positions, passed through the wall and into the hallway. We crowded at the door and saw it float back past the dining room, toward the back of the house. The light it gave off was real enough—I could see the glow lighting up the walls as it glided along.
Where the hall ended the ghost came to another framed ship picture, this one a blown-up color photo of a modern Navy ship. It passed right through without even pausing. "What's behind there?" I asked.
"That's the back wall. Only the garden," the Admiral said. "No use trying to follow the thing now, though, my boy. It never appears outside. It's vanished. That's how it is. Sometimes it just shows itself and evaporates, other times it drifts around for hours and fades out as it goes through an outer wall. Usually it's silent, as it was just now, but sometimes it makes bizarre sounds, as if it's trying to talk. The words aren't in any Earthly language, though, or else they're hopelessly garbled. I'm pretty sure of that."
"That was flat-out WEIRD, man," Wendy said, reluctantly sheathing her axe. "How'd you know it wouldn't do any good to attack him?"
The Admiral shook his head and heaved a sigh. "My dear Miss Corduroy, if you look at the wall of my study—which is where I first encountered the ghost nearly a year ago—you will find five bullet holes from a nine-millimeter M9 sidearm. Each one passed through the ghost's head or chest. Not a single one even slowed it down."
"Dude!" Wendy said. "You stood your ground. Good for you!"
"Thank you, but shooting it didn't solve my ghost problem." The Admiral smiled wearily. "Just as your axe didn't avail you."
"Nearly a year," I said. "Uh—do you remember the exact date?"
"Let me see. Not precisely," the Admiral said. He frowned, making his wrinkly face even more like a prune. "I didn't make a note of it, but just let me think . . . unless I'm mistaken, I believe it was late in August. Not the very end. Maybe around the twenty-third or twenty-fourth. Probably within a day one way or the other."
Mabel said, "That was when Weird—"
I nudged her and said, "Never mind all that."
"Oh. Sorry."
"Admiral, you told me that Mr. Preston Northwest recommended me. Do you mind if I ask how you know him?"
"We're members of the Gravity Falls Country Club," he said. "Last week we were both at a cocktail party there and fell into conversation. I don't have much in common with the Northwests, but you know how it is. You chat politely. Well, sir, the ghost had been more than usually boisterous the night before—jabbered those baffling sounds for nearly half an hour, just at midnight, kept me awake fuming about that for another three hours. I happened to mention to Northwest that I was leaving early because I felt exhausted, and I told him why. He then gave me the tale of the—lumberjack, was it? The lumberjack ghost that you confronted. Said you were the boy for such a task."
"I'll have to thank him," I said. "Sir, do you think the ghost might show up again tonight if we wait?"
"Very unlikely, my boy. On extremely rare occasions it appears twice in one evening, but most often we see it only once a night. Always at night, most commonly at midnight, though you'll note tonight it was two hours early. It's driving me crazy. Anything you can do . . . ."
I promised him that I would read up on ways to summon ghosts. If we could be sure it would appear, we might be able to banish it, or at least speak to it and find out what its purpose is. I'm sure it was aware of us. Those empty eyes WERE staring at me. I could feel it.
Anyway, we waited around until fifteen past midnight, just on the chance it would show up again, but no luck. Wendy said she'd drive us back again tomorrow night—well, tonight now, really, since it's Sunday already. "I wanna see how you deal with this thing, Dipper," she said.
Mabel began, "Maybe you could get a lamb costume—"
"Zip it, Sis."
Dipper and Mabel slept in that Sunday morning, making up for their late night. Then after Mabel went out to romp with Waddles, Dipper settled in at his desk in the attic, reading up on ghosts not only in the Journals but in the volumes of folklore he had brought with him from Piedmont. He also opened up his laptop and began to surf the web for advice on dealing with haunts and spooks.
He had packed a few emergency supplies, too, before boarding the bus for Gravity Falls—he had learned the previous summer that in that town it was good to be prepared for anything. In a small overnight bag he had a vial of anointed water, for example, and a round silver mirror (though that was supposed to work only on ghosts who materialized from paintings). He also had a bracelet made from rosewood (supposed to be protective against vampiric spirits) and a book of Latin spells meant to call up and to control ghosts. He copied out some of the likeliest-sounding chants, hoping that he could pronounce the Latin well enough for them to work.
The evening before, he had been too rattled to try to photograph the ghost with his cell phone, but he also had a good (though inexpensive) digital camera. He installed fresh batteries and checked it. Yes, it was working. Of course, ghosts were notoriously hard to catch in a picture. Still, worth trying.
In late afternoon, Dipper settled down and tried to catch a little sleep. If the ghost appeared at midnight or later, he wanted to be alert enough to react fast. He thought about how Wendy had sprung into action, drawing her axe from its sheath and shoving Dipper and Mabel behind her in one movement. "I wish I could be that quick," he murmured just before dozing off.
He drifted into sleep and into dreams, and though these made him toss and turn, he didn't wake up. Not for hours.
Then an incredibly loud WHONNNNK! jerked him awake, his heart hammering and his ears ringing. "Who—what—huh?"
"Air horn!" Mabel shouted, giving another ear-splitting blast. "Time for dinner, brogart! Melody said to wake you."
He was still shaking. "Don't do that! I was having a dream—"
Mabel clambered onto the foot of the bed and folded her legs under her, bouncing on her knees. "Ooh, a dream about Wendy? Was she riding a handsome white stallion naked except for her beautiful long hair, like Lady Ghirardelli?" She frowned, her tongue sticking out. "No, wait, that's the wrong chocolate."
Dipper shook his head morosely. "I was dreaming about Bill Cipher, if you want to know. He'd come back, and he was mad and wanted to hurt me in the worst way possible. It was all messed up, and I don't really remember details, but, Mabel, I think—I think he'd killed you." His voice broke on the last words.
"Oh!" Mabel dropped the air horn and clapped her hands over her mouth. "You don't think—"
"He's not back," Dipper said. "This was just a dream. I know the feel of Bill when he's in the Mindscape and worms his way into your head, and this wasn't anything like that." He sighed. "I don't think the ghost really has anything to do with Bill Cipher, but he showed up at the Admiral's house just about the time Bill opened that rift. That kind of worries me."
"You think he may be like a myrmidon of Bill's?"
"This time you mean 'minion.' From the look of him, I'd imagine he's more like a victim of Bill's. Anyway, I don't think the dream was a warning that Bill might be back. But it might possibly be an omen." Dipper paused, then said firmly, "Mabel, you can't come tonight."
"Whaaat?"
"It may be dangerous!"
She reached into her sweater and pulled something out. "In that case, I have two words: Grappling! Hook!"
"I don't want you to get hurt."
"Dipper," she said in a pleading voice, "don't you understand? You've got my back, and I've got yours. Mystery Twins!"
He stared at her before reluctantly returning her fist bump. "You're gonna go anyway, no matter what," he said.
"You can bet on it!"
"Okay. But Mabel—please, please don't take chances, okay?"
"Chances? Me? Ha! Brojangles, you know me!"
"Yes, I do," Dipper said. "That's why I'm worried."