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A Brand-New Day
(May-June 2012)
Dipper and Mabel had never been on such a long road trip. And they'd never been on a road trip alone. And then came one brand-new day.
It had started on Thursday afternoon—
No, wait, that's wrong. Let's rewind a little. It had really started on Thursday morning. The Pines twins woke up at their usual first-day-of-summer-vacation time, way early.
Um. Well, nine is sort of very early when there's no school to worry about for three grand, glorious, school-free months of summer vacation. Anyway, for a few days now Dipper and Mabel had been vaguely aware that their mom and dad, Alex and Wanda Pines, were busy with some secret-type plan.
In fact, they'd whispered about it the night before, when their parents thought they were already asleep.
"Disneyland!" Mabel said, jumping up and down on Dipper's bed to the accompaniment of mattress-spring squeaks. "Gotta be Disneyland! I wanna meet Goofy and wrestle him to the ground and find out if he's a dog that walks like a man or a man that looks like a dog! Fun!"
"It won't be Disneyland," Dipper said. "Stop jumping, they'll hear us. No, I'm almost sure it'll be summer camp. I hope it's not. I'd hate summer camp. So it's almost certainly summer camp. Which I'd hate."
"How do you know you'd hate it?" At the apex of her latest leap, Mabel tried to touch the ceiling and missed by eighteen inches. She jumped harder.
"I don't like being outdoors," Dipper said, bouncing each time her feet made the mattress go bwoinng. "Shh! And they make you go outdoors at summer camp. A lot. Even in the woods. Stop jumping!"
Mabel finally landed on her butt instead of her feet, bounced twice, and then settled down. "The outdoors is good for you!"
"Ugh. Sunburn. Sweating. And bullies. Lots of bullies. Especially at a summer camp."
"No, it won't be summer camp!" Mabel insisted, finally sitting next to her brother on the edge of the bed. "Can't be. Number-o one-o, that would be like super expensive for two of us. Number-o two-o, they know you can't take sleeping in a tent with like a zillion other guys. You'd start to feel all I'm Dipper and I'm inferior and these other guys are gonna make fun of me and hold me under the water until I drown! You'd have a complete mental breakdown! Fun!"
Dipper didn't laugh. "Yeah, that kind of thing would happen. That's why I think it's bound to be summer camp. They're always saying I should make friends and get outside and do more guy stuff like baseball and camping and sleeping under the stars where I'd be like grizzly bait in a sleeping bag. And swimming in a cold lake full of, I don't know, piranhas and electric eels and bacteria. "
"You don't even know how to swim," Mabel pointed out. "And baseball, pffft! Impossible. You're scared of people throwing balls at you."
"Yeah, but at camp I bet they make you learn that stuff and play games and everything. And that's not all. There's like mountain lions and other stuff that wants to kill you, poison oak and rattlesnakes."
"And bigfoot," Mabel said.
"Yeah, and bigfoot, and—wait, you don't even believe in bigfoot!"
"Yeah no," Mabel said, "but you do, Broseph! Mwop-mwop! Beep!"
Dipper swatted her hand as she beeped his nose. "Cut it out. Hey, I saw a movie on TV once. Somebody took a movie of a bigfoot walking along beside a creek. And that was here in California, not so far away!"
"Like a hundred years ago," Mabel said.
"No, I think it was more like forty-something years ago," Dipper said. "I've got a book somewhere I've been meaning to read that tells about it. Anyhow, I've seen online the existence of bigfoot has been covered up. The government or the Men in Black—"
"Dipper," Mabel said in a more serious tone, "please don't get started on your conspiracy theories. Hey, maybe mom and dad are sending us off from home 'cause they've got something to hide. Maybe they got bit by vampires! So cool!"
"Sheesh," Dipper said. "Vampires aren't real, either, Mabel!"
"Oh, well, maybe they've been taken over by aliens."
"You think?" Dipper asked.
He sounded so worried that Mabel giggled. "You don't believe in vampires, but aliens and bigfoot are real?"
"I've read books!" he said.
"So have I," Mabel reminded him, hugging herself. "The Dusk series. Hot vampires!"
"Real vampires don't sparkle!"
"How do you know? You really think they're real, don't you?"
"No, I don't! But if they were, they wouldn't!"
They finally argued themselves to sleep.
And the next morning, after breakfast, while Mabel was playing with Ripper, the family kitten, and Dipper was playing Marco Brothers in the Zone Precinct on his GameGuy, Mom suddenly said, "Now, we've got a surprise for you." She and Dad were smiling at the twins.
"Yay!" Mabel said to the cat. "We're getting a dog! He'll be like a brother to you, Ripper! Don't kill him! What can we name him, what can we—"
"Not a dog," Dad said firmly. "It's a trip."
"It's a trap?" a panicked Dipper asked.
The parents produced a backpack and rolled-up sleeping bag for Mabel and Dipper's old duffel bag, which used to be his dad's old duffel bag back when Dad was in college or something. "A trip!" Dad corrected with a grin, and then he spelled it, "T-R-I-P!"
Mom and Dad smeared zinc sunblock on both their noses. Pineses were prone to red noses.
"Disneyland!" Mabel yelled. "Goofy, you better watch out, you big lug!"
"No," Mom said.
Dipper felt his heart beating hard. "Not—summer camp?" he squeaked.
Dad laughed. "Even better!"
"You're selling us?" Mabel asked. "We're being Shanghaied? Are we gonna be forced to be sailors on a pirate ship? Yo ho!"
"No," Mom said. "If you'd only listen—you're going to spend summer in the country with your great uncle."
"We have an uncle?" Dipper asked.
"What makes him so great?" Mabel asked suspiciously.
"What makes him great," Mom said, "is that he's Alex's uncle. That makes him your great-uncle."
"Oh," Dipper said, frowning. "Right, right. I think I remember him from a long time ago. Laughs real loud."
"You couldn't have been more than four years old the last time you saw him," Dad said. "His name is Dr. Stanford Pines, and he's a—uh. A research scientist. He's asked you to come and visit him in a little town called Gravity Falls, Oregon. There's a label on Dipper's suitcase."
"Oh," Dipper said, noticing the hand-lettered sticker. What kind of town is named Gravity Falls? "So for part of the summer? we'll be there for, uh, a few . . . days?"
"More than a few," Dad said.
"Let's go warm up the car!" Mabel yelled. "Road trip! Road trip! I call shotgun!"
"Guess again," Dad said.
And that was when they found out they would not go in the family car, but would be taking a bus trip. A very long bus trip. At least they had a few hours to pack some personal things, books and knitting supplies and such.
At the small Piedmont station, a cinder-block building about as big as a rural gas station, they boarded the Speedy Beaver bus a little before three that afternoon. Dad told them, "You'll have to sleep on the bus, but we've packed sandwiches for you, and Dipper has your food allowance money to buy breakfast for you both tomorrow morning."
"All night!" Mabel said. "Like a sleepover! On wheels!"
Dipper nervously said, "I really don't want to—"
"Get on the bus, Dipper," Mom said. "And don't you two get off at rest stops and dawdle. If you miss the bus, you're in big trouble! Now here's a photo of your great-uncle Stanford so you'll recognize him. And have him call us as soon as—"
"Bus leaving for Sacramento, Eugene Oregon, and points north!" called the bus driver.
Dipper said, "I really don't—"
"You two have a great time," Dad said.
"And behave. And be careful," added Mom, giving them each a hug.
Dipper squirmed. "I really—"
"Find a seat," the driver said. And somehow the doors closed behind Dipper, and burdened with the backpack, he trudged past about thirty passengers to the seat where Mabel was already waving to him.
"You can have the window side," she said generously. "Let me see the photo!"
Dipper showed it to her. It showed a man with a red nose—the Pines trademark—messy graying brown hair, spectacles, and a wall-to wall grin. "He looks weird."
Mabel screwed up her mouth. "Mmm, no, he looks Pinesy. Hey, Broseph, where are those sandwiches?"
He got them from the backpack and handed them over. Dipper didn't even have his GameGuy. He had packed it together with his books, but Mom took it out again and told him, "No spending hours on video games, Dipper. We want you to get outside, get some fresh air, exercise, and sunshine."
At least he still had a few books.
As for Mabel—after wolfing her sandwiches, she discovered the bus had a very small potty at the back, and she visited it and returned with a square of toilet tissue. She borrowed Dipper's pen and the book he had taken out to read on the bus—The Shadows Hold the Strings, an exposé of ten conspiracy theories, from secret underground military bases holding alien prisoners, to haunted government buildings protected by clandestine forces devoted to secrecy, to a covert group of operatives whose sole purpose was to hush up paranormal events and creatures—you get the idea.
Anyway, Mabel used the paperback book as a writing surface and the ballpoint to print "SPEEDY BEAVER BUS NORTH, MAY 31 2012" on the toilet paper. "Here ya go, Brobro," she said, returning the pen.
"Uh—what's the idea?" Dipper asked as Mabel rummaged in her carry-on suitcase.
"Scrapbookportunity!" Mabel said, pulling out a pink scrapbook, its covers already decorated with stickers. "See? I bought this one specially for our summer vacation, and here's the first page! And—there we go, Exhibit A. I can't wait to see what other great things I'm gonna add."
"You can only go up from here," Dipper said, trying to find his place in the book again.
Eighteen hours, the trip would take. Because of all the stops, the trip would take eighteen whole hours. A car would make it in eight or nine.
Mabel had devoured her two sandwiches the minute they got on the bus. At about seven P.M. Dipper ate one of his somewhere north of Ukiah. Mabel begged for half of his other sandwich and eagerly gobbled it down. Then she ate the two apples Mom had packed for them. "Still hungry. Ugh! Maybe I'll survive," she groaned.
The bus made a bunch of stops from then until midnight. Each stop was from a quarter of an hour to thirty minutes long. Sometimes the kids got up and stretched their legs, just by walking up and down the aisle of the bus. Dipper was too antsy to risk getting off anywhere—he might accidentally miss the bus and then where would he be? And mom and dad would have to drive and get him, and he'd be grounded for the rest of the summer—
They dozed on and off, and then at midnight they finally dropped off for good, Mabel leaning on Dipper's shoulder, Dipper leaning his head, only partly cushioned by his brown baseball cap, against the bus window. The not-so-Speedy Beaver rumbled along, and if it made more stops, they did not disturb the snoozing twins.
Early in the morning, Dipper woke, woozy and wondering where the heck he was and why his shoulder felt wet. Then he realized that Mabel was drooling on it. He nudged her. "It's day," he said. "Come on, a brand-new day. Wake up!"
"The monkey stole my wallet," she complained in a semiconscious mumble. "Huh? We're there?"
"I don't think so, we're still moving. I don't really know where we are. Looks foggy. What monkey?"
She frowned. "Is there a monkey? Do they let monkeys ride the bus? Do they get a reduced fare? Are there bananas? I'm hungry!"
A few minutes after that, the bus driver clarified things. A bit. "Salem, Oregon," he announced as he slowed the vehicle to a stop in front of a yellow building. "Thirty-minute stop. If anyone wants breakfast, there's a café next to the station. We will board again at six-fifteen exactly. Remember, six-fifteen! We're in slot one, easy to remember, slot one, bus number 618. If you're stopping for breakfast, hang onto your ticket, you'll need it to reboard."
They got off the bus—Dipper's legs were stiff—and then visited the bus station washrooms, which were not as clean as the school bathrooms but not as dirty as they might have been. Dipper found the café while waiting for Mabel, and Mabel came out with another square of toilet tissue. "You're kidding," he said.
"Nope. This is a specimen from Oregon. I've never been to Oregon before!" She inscribed it and tucked away for later pasting in the scrapbook.
The café, more a cafeteria, really, at least featured fast service. They went down the line with trays and had OJ, scrambled eggs, hash-brown potatoes, and toast, all sort of meh but edible, and then Mabel used some change to buy four peanut-brittle candy bars from a vending machine that might have dated back to the Kennedy Administration. The machine, at least. No guesses on the candy.
Dipper had secured the tickets in his pocket, taking care of at least one worry. As they were getting back aboard the bus, Mabel paused to ask the driver—a different one for this leg of the journey, a sort of chubby, cheerful looking blond guy in a crisply pressed Navy-blue uniform over a light-blue shirt and dark tie—"Hey, cutie, when will we get to Gravity Falls?"
The man smiled at her. "We're a little behind schedule, but we'll be in Gravity Falls in about three hours, Miss. Just one short stop between here and there to slow us down. Nice scenery, though, if the weather clears!"
"Ooh, you said 'Miss!' How could you tell I'm not married, you sly fox, you?" Mabel wriggled the fingers of her left hand. "Oh, right. No rings! Drive carefully, now!"
Again she told Dipper to take the window seat. "Did you have to flirt with the driver?" he whispered.
"Oh, pshaw, Dipper!" She pronounced that like pee-shaw. "I'm just getting in a little practice! Who knows, this is our first summer away from home and parents, and I may just find me a summer romance when we get to our Grunkle's house."
"You're too—wait, what? Our what's what?"
"Grunkle Stanford!" Mabel said. "Great uncle, grunkle, get it? I just thought that up at breakfast. What's a Pitt Cola?"
"Grunkle," Dipper said. "I don't know, what?"
"I'm asking you!" she said. "It's some kind of canned soda. I saw a vending machine that sells them."
"Never heard of them before," Dipper said.
"Last call," the bus station PA said in a woman's cheery voice. "Bus leaving for Gravity Falls in two minutes! Dock one, Bus 618, boarding now!"
A minute and fifty seconds later, the driver stood, turned and counted heads. "Looks like we're all here. Let's go!" he said.
He fired up the engine and the Speedy Beaver rolled away to what turned out to be a curving, twisting, yet scenic ride eastward. The fog thinned and then vanished, leaving a clear but pale-blue sky, as though the watery morning sun shone through a high, thin cloud layer.
Dipper tried to read but couldn't concentrate. Mabel gazed out the window and sometimes pointed out something interesting—whole herds of giant Christmas trees, undecorated of course, a waterfall, a snow-capped mountain, a picnic area with early-morning tourists having, presumably, an open-air breakfast.
Eventually the bus turned north, briefly stopped at a town called Bend, where about half of the remaining twelve passengers got off, nobody got on, and then after only five minutes it rumbled on to the north.
"Wow," Dipper said some minutes later as they made a turn. "Look way up ahead."
At first it was hard to see because of the trees, but then for a few moments they glimpsed some sheer, oddly split cliffs with serious overhangs and, far overhead, what looked like a metal bridge joining the two cliffs at the top. Soon they passed a rustic wooden sign, Welcome to Gravity Falls, and a river rippled next to the highway, and then they started to see houses, many of them log cabins.
"Hey, look ahead at the water tower!" Mabel said. "It's darling!"
"It's wood!" Dipper said, staring at the cylindrical water tank with its red roof. From this angle he could read part of the sign on it: AVITY ALLS.
They rode through the streets of town, at a sedate pace. "How quaint!" Mabel said.
"Looks old and shabby to me," Dipper responded. "And it's tiny. I mean, even compared to Piedmont, it's a small town. It's got nothing—wait, there's an arcade!"
"I see a mall! And a library!" Mabel said a moment later. "Over there, see? And look, a Museum of History! You're gonna love it, lots of nerd stuff—ooh, look at that jogging guy in the muscle shirt! I gotta meet him!"
The brakes hissed, the bus creaked, and they pulled over to a simple open-air bus stop. "Gravity Falls," the driver announced. "The two of you for Gravity Falls, this is the stop. I'll get your luggage out."
The driver got out first and unlocked the luggage compartment. He pulled out the suitcases and duffel bags, and Mabel said, "His!" so Dipper hoisted his two bags and shouldered the backpack, the sleeping bag rolled up and strapped to the top of it. Mabel took her suitcases—a purple plastic hard-shell one with pink polka dots and mushrooms, plus some stickers that personalized it, and a soft-sided green one that held mostly craft and knitting stuff.
The bus fired up and rolled away, trailing a cloud of exhaust fumes. Then a voice like a rusted gate swinging on its hinges called out, "Hello!"
Dipper's eyes widened. He saw standing behind the bus stop a tall, big-nosed, bespectacled, broad-shouldered man in a black suit, white shirt, red string bow tie, and one of those flat-topped Moroccan caps, what was it called, a fez, in a muted red that matched the tie. It was the guy in the photo, all right, maybe ten years older than in the picture.
"Uh—Great-Uncle Pines?" Dipper asked.
"Grunkle Stanford!" Mabel chirped. "I'd know you anywhere. Is that you?"
"Right! And it's just 'Stan,'" the guy said with a grin. "Throw your junk in the trunk and climb into the car."
He unlocked the trunk of a long red convertible with a cream-colored top—a really old car, but in good condition, Dipper thought. The guy didn't help as Mabel and Dipper stored their luggage. "There ya go," he said, slamming the trunk. "Back seat, and fasten those seatbelts. Wait, wait, let me get your names straight." He aimed a finger at Mabel. "Who're you, Pumpkin?"
"Ha! It's me, Mabel!"
"Mabel, gotcha. And you, little guy?"
"Little?" Dipper asked. "I'm Dipper!"
"Mabel, Dippy," Stan said, getting behind the wheel.
"Dipper!" Dipper yelped.
Mabel laughed. "No, he's Dippy! Hah!"
Their, well, Grunkle, slammed the driver's door. "Dipper, OK. Seatbelts?"
"Fastened," Dipper said.
"Me, too!" Mabel added. "When's breakfast?"
"Is it far?" Dipper asked. "We've been on the bus a long time—hey, look at the water tower—it's got a big muffin on it!"
"Muffins," Mabel said longingly. "I'm so hungry!"
"Nah, not far, we're practically there," Stan said, answering Dipper's question and ignoring the rest. "Up the hill—this is Gopher Road, guys." For a few minutes the car rose on a steep grade, and while it did, he sort of hummed: "Doo ti doo ti doo, there's the driveway up ahead, hang on—and now gimme a few moments and I'll amaze ya! Get out and stand close by the car, right there. Hold on, I'll open the trunk, get your crap out and then wait right there! I'll just be a second."
Dipper and Mabel looked at each other, shrugged, and got their luggage out. "This is it?" Dipper asked as he gave the house an appalled gaze. "This wreck?"
"I think it's fascinating!" Mabel replied. "So rusticky! And look, flags! And a totem pole! And see there on the porch, a vending machine! Pitt Cola! I want one!"
"Where did Great-Uncle Stanford go?" Dipper asked. "Yikes!"
A huge burst of smoke had billowed just ahead of them. And as it thinned—
"Ta-dah!" there stood Stan in a theatrical pose, arms stretched out, holding in his right hand a cane with an eight-ball for a head, pointing at the ramshackle house. "Welcome to your home away from home! Prepare for a summer of bewilderment, befuddlement, hard work, and bedazzlement!"
"How'd you do that?" Mabel asked, clapping. "Uh, what was that third one?"
"He threw a smoke bomb and then jumped from behind that tree—" Dipper said.
"Nah, it's magic!" Stan said, laughing. "The magic of Gravity Falls!"
"Wait, what?" Dipper asked.
"Enough chit-chat, Dippy—"
"Dipper!"
"Dipper, then, grab your stuff and come in and take a look. We'll go in through the Museum, over there!"
That side of the house featured a tall lantern with a rectangular bulletin board affixed, postcards and such tacked to it. Up the steps and they passed a small lectern on their left and Dipper saw a sign on the right: ADMISSION $20 CHILDREN UNDER 12 $10.00. And over the log-framed double door he read another sign.
"Mystery Shack? What is this place?"
"It's a tourist trap!" Stan said as they passed through a collection of weird displays. A sign warned "Be Amazed," and they were, if not absolutely amazed, at least quietly stunned by such things as a flying saucer hanging on a string, what looked like a mannequin in a gorilla costume and wearing tight white underwear, a stuffed, buffed jackrabbit with antlers glued to its head, a ghastly-looking dried creature that the label said was a Fiji Mermaid—
And then they emerged and Stan led them to the foot of some rickety stairs. "And you'll be staying up in the deluxe penthouse attic bedroom! Right up these stairs, you'll see a storage closet and a bathroom on the left, but go through the door straight ahead, pick out a bed, and that's your home until the end of August. Stow your bags but don't unpack yet. Come downstairs and I'll introduce you to the staff. Chop-chop!"
They found the bedroom, one twin bed on each side. Not much furniture—a table, a couple of chairs, the beds, an empty footlocker, its lid open, a half-sized wooden file cabinet, and assorted junk—a console of some kind under a sheet that turned out to be a non-working whack-a-mole game, a framed painting of a ship at sea, an old-fashioned lantern on the table, though it turned out to be battery-powered, and one triangular window on the end wall letting in the morning sun.
"Dibs on this bed!" Mabel announced, dropping her suitcases beside it. She immediately opened the green one and began to dig out posters and tack them to the slanting wall while she stood on the right-hand bed. "Where were you keeping the thumbtacks?" Dipper asked.
"In my mouth! I love this mattress!" She showed why by jumping up and down on the right-hand bed. "Bet I can touch the ceiling beam! Woop! Woop! Woopwoopwoop!"
"Mabel—"
She stopped bouncing. "This attic is amazing! Check out all my splinters!" she held up hands that looked a like two bristly cactus plants.
Dipper had turned to look at the other bunk. "And there's a goat on my bed," he said in a voice lacking either amazement or excitement.
Mabel leaped off her bed and rushed over. "Hello, friend!" The goat, with no expression at all, turned its head as Mabel reached to pet it and began to nibble the sleeve of Mabel's favorite sweater, the red one with the rainbow-trailing shooting star. Instead of being irritated, Mabel chuckled. "Yes, you can keep chewing on my sweater!"
And who knows, her sweater might have wound up as goat chow, but just then their great uncle shouted, "Kids! Get your butts downstairs, now! I gotta introduce you!"
"Come on, goat," Dipper said. He urged the creature off his bed and herded it ahead of them as they went downstairs.
"That thing again?" Stan asked as the goat clomped to the bottom of the stair. "Oy! Shoo. Out! And stay in the yard!" He opened a side door and with his foot urged the goat outside.
"Mehhhh," the goat complained.
"Shut it!" Stan said, but it was unclear if he was addressing the goat, because he closed the door. "You two, come with me. This is the gift shop."
"He was right," Dipper said. "It's a tourist trap." No doubt about that. The room had shelves and tables crammed with overpriced souvenir-type geegaws.
"OK," Stan said. "This here is Soos, our handyman."
A huge, pear-shaped guy wearing a brown cap and a dark-green tee shirt with a question mark—and cargo shorts, too, under that—grinned at them. He had a serious overbite and buck teeth like a beaver. "'Sup, dawgs?" he asked, waving a hammer at them. "Like, welcome to the Mystery Shack."
"Soos, the boy's Dip, uh, Dipper. The girl is Mabel."
"Unusual names!" Soos said enthusiastically. Dipudipper and Maple. I got it!"
"Call me Mabel," Mabel said.
"Ha, you got it, Hambone!"
"Hambone?" Dipper asked.
"I like it!" Mabel said. "Hah, Hambone!"
"Well—Soos, I guess-call me Dipper."
"Sheesh, next you guys are gonna be talking interior design with Soos," complained Stan. "Over here at the counter, this here's our cashier, Wendy."
"Hi, Wendy!" Mabel said.
Dipper blinked. Sitting back behind the cash register, tilted in her chair, with her long legs up on the counter, ankles crossed, stretched the most striking girl he had ever seen. She had big eyes (though half-closed as if in boredom), a tilted nose, and freckles on both cheeks. She also had long, long red hair, wore a fur cap, a green flannel shirt, jeans, mud-spattered boots, and she was reading a magazine. She didn't even look up. "Eh," she said.
"I'm Dippy," Dipper said.
"He means Dipper," Mabel said, elbowing him.
"Nice to meet you," Dipper managed.
"Yeah, whatever." She turned a page, and Dipper thought, She's so graceful!
"Glad you all get along so well," said Stan. "Here ya go, Dipper."
Dipper looked at the broom his great uncle had thrust into his hands. "What?"
"It's called a broom. Ya use it to sweep. Sweep the floors. Get to it. There's a dustpan at the end of the counter. Use it. Dump the crap you sweep up into the big trash can out on the lawn. Hustle! Pumpkin, take this and this. This is a dust cloth, and this is spray cleaner. Dust everything if it's got a surface, and if it's glass, spray it with the cleaner and then wipe. Got that?"
"Easy peasy!"
"Hah!" Stan said. "I like this one! Get busy, you two, we'll have tourists any second now."
In fifteen minutes, they did have tourists, because a sightseeing bus pulled into the parking lot. Wendy unenthusiastically started to ring up purchases, while Stan gulled a half-dozen visitors into paying for a visit to the Museum and a tram trip down the Mystery Trail, whatever that was.
The rest of the tourists gradually drifted out into the yard, where they took photos while waiting for the tram to return. Wendy went back to her teen magazine. Dipper, who had swept through about six rooms, amazing the place had that many, said, "We rode all night on the bus for this?"
"I think it's fun!" Mabel said. "Hey, watch me shine up this glass jar full of eyeballs!"
"They're only rubber," Dipper said.
Wendy, without looking up, said, "No, they're real eyeballs. These're probably dead, but the live ones fly around."
"Uh—what?"
Wendy rolled her eyes. They were so green. "Yeah, floating eyeballs. There's also eyebats. You'll find out."
They had a lunch break at noon—Stan sent Soos into town for burgers and fries—and he sprang for sodas for everyone. "This is a one-time deal," he warned. "I'll provide meals for you guys—we're gonna have canned beef stew for dinner, by the way—but you buy your own sodas after today."
"Pitt!" Mabel said. "I never had one of these!"
"Yeah, I'll get 'em from the machine," Stan said. "Pitt's for everybody."
"Watch out for the pit," Wendy warned.
"What . . . does that mean?" Dipper asked.
Wendy rolled her eyes again. It seemed her go-to gesture. "It's a peach pit, man. One in every can. Pitt Cola's, like, famous for that."
Soos returned, carrying a big paper bag of Yumberjack burgers. Stan said, "OK, I gotta wolf mine down in case any tourists show up. The rest of you, don't choke yourself, but eat fast. I want everyone on the floor in twenty minutes."
"Dance party!" Mabel said.
"Heh! Wrong, Pumpkin, not a dance floor, but I like your gumption!"
"I don't know what that is, but thanks! Hey, this tastes like peaches!"
Dipper had to admit the burger was pretty good, though he took the tomato slices off his. He couldn't stand tomatoes. Wendy glanced at them as though amused and asked, "You gonna eat those, man?"
"No, you can have them."
"Thanks, dude. Trade you." She removed the meat patty from her burger and put it on his paper plate as she took the tomatoes.
"You don't like the beef?" Dipper asked.
"Hah!" Soos said. "Wendy's, like, a part-time vegetarian. Sometimes she just has a tomato and lettuce and onion and pickle burger."
"I just don't want to get fat," Wendy said. "This job has me on my butt all day."
"We could have a dance party, " Mabel said. "That would give you some exercise."
"Not here we couldn't," Wendy said. "Stan won't allow it."
"I can hear you!" Stan called from the gift shop. He'd already finished his burger and soda. "I might just surprise you one of these days!"
Wendy raised her voice: "Stan won't have a dance here 'cause he's a considerate guy and a responsible business owner and has to make sure none of these precious exhibits get busted or damaged."
From the gift shop, Stan called, "That's better!"
Wendy mimed sticking her finger down her throat.
More tourists came through, a thin if steady stream, until about four that afternoon. Soos was busy outside somewhere with an electric saw and some sheets of plywood. As the tourist flood ebbed to nothing, Wendy looked increasingly bored, leaning her cheek on her hand and staring into space. Finally, at 4:15, Stan asked, "Floors all swept?"
"Yes!" Dipper said.
"Tourists are messy and track in dirt. Give the floor in this room one last pass, then put the broom and dustpan away in the staff room." Stan inspected the counter and the eyeball jar. "Good job on the dusting, Sweetie."
"Thanks, Grunkle Stan!" Mabel was poking around. She reached for something that looked like a soccer-ball-sized model of a cat's eyeball with a narrow green iris, black slit pupil, and squiggly blood vessels. "Ooh!"
Stan rapped her outstretched hand with his eight-ball cane, but not very hard. "No touching the merchandise! OK, you two gremlins, I guess you can knock off for the afternoon."
"Me, too?" Wendy asked hopefully.
"Not a chance! We gotta restock some stuff, arrange the shelves the way I like 'em, and you gotta help me with that."
"Aw, man!"
Stan pushed his glasses up and rubbed his eyes. "Look, Wendy, help with the restocking and the tidying, and if we don't got much business goin' on, you can leave then. Should be half an hour or so. So you can take off an hour and fifteen minutes early."
"With pay, right?"
"Yeah, I won't dock you. Take it or leave it."
"I'll take it!" Wendy pulled out her phone. "Hang on a sec, I'm gonna text Tambry. My dad and brothers are goin' off bowling tonight, and I'll see if my crew can swing by and pick me up so we can go to a movie or some deal. Four forty-five, right?"
Stan held up a warning finger. "Only if we finish!"
Wendy cheered up and was speaking softly on her phone. Dipper blinked. Wow, she has a nice smile. I wonder how old she is—
"I, uh, I could help, you guys," he heard himself say.
Stan snorted. "Nah, you had that long bus ride. Plus, you don't know the layout like Wendy does. Last, your folks want you to get out in the sunshine and all, and I promised 'em I'd kick you out of the house every so often. Now go out and enjoy the fresh air and nature and whatever. Frolic. Explore."
Mabel asked, "Grunkle Stan? Could I go to the mall instead? I saw it when we were driving in."
Scratching his big reddish-orange nose, Stan said, "Yeah, I suppose. It's about a mile from here. But be careful walking! Stay on the shoulder of the road facing the traffic and be sure to look both ways before you cross—"
"Got it!" Mabel said, heading out the door.
Wendy put away her phone, rose from her seat at the register and stretched her arms She mildly complained, "Wish I was still a little kid like her."
Stan growled, "Dipper, why're you just standin' there with your jaw hangin' open? Go on, get outdoors. Breathe. Frisk, caper, cavort. Whatever kids do. And be back for dinner no later than six-thirty. Hey, hurry out and catch your sister and tell her that!"
Dipper did, running after Mabel and catching up to her on the driveway. He told her Stan's deadline.
"Six-thirty, roger that," Mabel said, giving him two thumbs up. "See ya!"
"Uh, I could walk with you—"
"Negatory!" Mabel said, grinning. "Imma go hunt me up a boyfriend! Uh-huh, uh-huh!" She pumped both arms and, with tongue hanging out, did a silly little dance step.
"Sheesh," Dipper said. "Thanks for warning me. Now I'm glad I'm not going with you!" He turned, went back into the Shack and got a book and a pen, in case he wanted to make marginal notes. The book, one of several he'd bought to read during the summer, was Sasquatch: Real or Fact? by Homer W. Creduloni. The whole first section, four chapters, was about cryptid humanoids in the Pacific Northwest—one reason he had packed the volume for the trip. Another reason was that he hadn't yet read that one.
Outside he followed the sound of the saw and then the scent of freshly cut wood to the Museum porch. Wearing clear protective goggles, Soos was using a hand jigsaw to cut what looked like arrows from a sheet of thin plywood. One dropped with a clatter as Dipper turned the corner, and Soos switched off the electric saw. "Way to go, Soos," Soos said, apparently to himself. "Everything points to success! Heh! Points! Wish somebody was here to hear that."
"Hi, Soos," said Dipper.
Soos started as if surprised. "Oh, hey, uh, Dipper, how's it hanging, dude? Say, I was just doing this job, see these arrows I cut, and it came to me, everything points to success. Points, dude! Kind of a pointed remark! Get it?"
Dipper faked a laugh and then said, "Uh, yeah, funny, well, Great-Uncle Stan gave—"
Soos grinned as he stacked up a good many plywood arrows. "You mean 'Grunkle Stan?'" he asked. "Like your sister says?"
Dipper shrugged. "Ah, yeah, sure, why not? Anyway, Grunkle Stan said I could have a couple of hours off. Where's a nice quiet place to sit and read?"
Soos scratched his chin. "Um, the library? No, I guess you don't have a card yet. Hey, how about the woods? There's a little clearing down that way, on the left, not far, easy to find. There's like a stone circle in the middle with wood ashes in it where we sometimes have bonfires. But nothing's burning there now. It's like shady and cool and you can listen to nature while you read, I guess?"
"Thanks, man. I'm, uh," Dipper said. "I owe you one."
"Hey, what's a handyman for? Oh, by the way, don't fall in the big round hole. It's bottomless, dawg. Bottomless!"
"I'll watch out," Dipper said.
He did notice the so-called bottomless pit, a broad circle of darkness with no warning sign or guardrail, and didn't go near it. And a little way down the trail he found the place where, from the looks of things, Stan or someone had frequent campfires. He settled down, leaning his back against a tree with his pen in his teeth, listened for a moment—nothing alarming, the nearby gurgle of a creek, the breeze in the treetops, and bird chirps and trills and the rat-tat-tat sound of one or more woodpeckers way off somewhere doing their thing.
With a sigh of contentment, Dipper opened his book and began to read Chapter 1:
Picture a perfect warm, dry late-October day in 1967 in the rugged back country of the Klamath River Valley, twenty miles northwest of the small settlement of Orleans, California. In the wilderness silence, two men on horseback and dressed like cowboys straight out of a John Wayne western amble along a rough trail toward the small stream called Bluff Creek.
Suddenly the lead rider's horse rears, spooked by something unknown. The rider tumbles from the saddle, but springs up again, draws, and begins to shoot!
To shoot a film, that is. Because fifty or a hundred yards away, Roger Patterson has spotted the quarry he has long been hunting for. It is dark brown, as shaggy and large as a grizzly, as fast as a deer.
It briefly looks back at him as his movie camera whirs away.
Then it speeds out of sight—on two legs. It walks like a man.
Patterson has just taken the short strip of movie film showing the elusive ape-man of the Northwest: Sasquatch.
But he was not the first man in the country or even in the area to see one. To follow the tale of the creature some call Bigfoot, some Sasquatch, we have to go far back in time, to the days when no European foot had ever left a print on North American soil.
It was Dipper's kind of book. Time passed as he read intently and kept absent-mindedly chewing on the pen. Then something bit or stung his left arm. He put the open book face-down on his lap and swatted. Mosquitoes. More than one. "Shoo!"
He picked up the book and started to read again. Chapter Three was up to the story of Albert Ostman, a Canadian prospector who claimed that in 1924 a "man-beast" had raided his camp, picked him up in his sleeping bag and carried him like a sack of frightened potatoes to a lair of the creatures, who were a cross between human and ape and who held him captive for nearly a week—
In the dappled sunshine of the late afternoon, Dipper started to get the weird feeling that he was being watched. He lowered the book and looked around. Nobody. But just in case, he got up, stretched—he had been sitting for more than an hour—and still feeling uneasy, he walked down the trail until he could see the Mystery Shack ahead through the trees and bushes.
Soos was no longer working out front. Dipper cut into the woods for a few yards and found another tree to lean against, this one at the foot of a grassy hill. He'd be more comfortable to be within running distance of the Shack, in case—well, just in case.
He settled down, read to the last page of Chapter Three, and was about to begin Chapter Four when Mabel's voice startled him: "What'cha up to, Brobro?"
"Reading," he said. "Did you already go to the Mall?"
She sashayed over, primping a little, fooling with her dark brown hair. "Yeah, and I found a prince of a guy! Literally!" She grinned, her braces gleaming. "The Prince of Mattresses! But I scared him away. And, oh, yeah, there's a park? And a guy was on a bench, resting, 'cause he'd been walking his pet turtle! And I tried to tell him how much I like turtles—"
"You don't like turtles."
"Well, I don't hate them! But he wasn't in the mood to chat, I guess. That's an awesome hill behind you! I think I'll climb it."
"Go ahead," Dipper said. "I brought a book."
"OK!"
Dipper had just settled down when—he thought—Mabel tapped him on the head, hard. "Quit it!"
And then something definitely pecked him, though his hat gave him some protection. A woodpecker had perched on his head.
Mabel had reached the summit of the hill and now came rolling down it like a log. "Yay, grass!" she yelled as the bird drummed on his head. Mabel could get the most fun out of the dumbest things. She always looked on the bright side. Didn't she feel as out of place out here as he did? Didn't she find the whole idea of a scientist running a hokey tourist trap sort of, well, disturbing?
Didn't—
"Boo!"
To Dipper's shock, a hideous, horned, reptilian thing bared its teeth at him!
"Yah!" Dipper threw himself to the ground, dropping his book and losing his place.
The bird squawked and flew away. The monstrous creature started to laugh.
And then Dipper realized the face was an oversized mask as his great-uncle removed it and nearly choked laughing at him.
Mabel didn't help by walking back up from the bottom of the ill and offering congratulations: "Good one, Grunkle Stan!"
Stan coughed from laughing so hard, thumped his chest, and said, "Worth it! Hi, Sweetie. Yeah, yeah I got him good. Come on you knuckleheads, I got dinner started. You guys can set the table. Ya may want to wash your hands first. Or in Dipper's case, change your pants! Hah!"
"That wasn't funny," Dipper murmured, retrieving his book and pen.
And if that day wasn't fun, the next one wasn't even more fun.
Once again, Stan put everyone to work—Wendy at the counter, obviously super bored, Soos mounting shelves to a wall, Dipper both dusting and sweeping, and Mabel—looking for a guy. She left a checklist so some tourist would find it, and a teen boy did, reading aloud, "Uh, 'Do You Like Me? Yes, definitely—absolutely?"
"I rigged it!" Mabel explained in a whisper.
Dipper, cleaning the eyeball jar—it tended to collect lots of sticky fingerprints, and now that he was near it, he became uneasily aware that when he moved near it, the floating eyeballs slowly swiveled in the liquid as though to keep him in view. He said to Mabel, "I know you're going through your whole boy-crazy phase, but I think you're kinda overdoing it with the crazy part."
"What?" Mabel blew a raspberry and flapped her hand as though batting down his objection. Then, earnestly, she started to explain why, since this was her first time away from home, she intended to have an epic summer romance.
Just that morning she had introduced herself to a kid about her age: "I'm Mabel, but you can call me the girl of your dreams!" Her "I'm joking" shove knocked him down, along with a display of postcards.
Add to that the turtle guy, the guy hawking mattresses, the questionnaire guy—
"Do you have to flirt with every guy you see?" Dipper asked.
"Mock all you want!" Mabel said. She pointed to the Museum door. "The man of my dreams might walk through that door right this minute!"
But instead, Grunkle Stan walked, in burped, and after muttering, "Not good," he held up a hammer and the arrows that Soos had cut out, now painted and with strings attached, and said, "Look alive, people. I need someone to go hammer up these signs in the spooky part of the forest!"
"Not it!" Mabel yelled.
Dipper was almost as fast.
Then Soos, up on a ladder with a portable drill in one hand and a chocolate bar in the other, said, "Also not it."
"Nobody asked you, Soos," growled Grunkle Stan.
"I know," Soos said easily. "And I'm comfortable with that." He took a bite of chocolate.
"Wendy!" an exasperated Stan called. "I need you to put up this sign!"
At the far end of the gift shop, Wendy, leaning back in her seat and resting her heels on the counter, stretched out her arm, coming twenty feet short of touching the hammer, but didn't even glance up from her magazine. "I would—ugh! But I can't—ugh! Reach it!"
Stan said flatly, "I'd fire all of you if I could."
Then he did the eeny-meeny-miney-moe thing and, wouldn't you know it, he landed on Dipper.
"What?" Dipper asked. "Grunkle Stan, whenever I'm in those woods, I feel like I'm being watched." That, in fact, had been his whole topic of conversation while he, Stan, and Mabel ate the none-too-tasty beef stew for dinner the night before.
Stan looked exasperated. "This again?"
Dipper remembered what he'd noticed that morning when he first got up. He shoved up his left sleeve. "I'm telling you, something weird's going on in this town! Just today, my mosquito bites spelled out 'BEWARE!'"
Dryly, his great-uncle said, "That says 'BEWARB.'" And, um, it did. Stan insisted that the legends of things in the woods were just fake rumors spread so he could sell merchandise. He handed the arrows, the hammer, and a bunch of nails to Dipper.
The short and the long of it was that Dipper wound up out in the woods—Stan had said, "Just make a circle about two hundred yards all around the Shack. Nail a sign on any tree where some dumb hiker or picknicker might see it. Make sure the arrows point this way. Should be easy. Go do it."
It was an overcast day with a wind stirring the tops of the pines. In the gloomy light, everything looked different and threatening. The undergrowth rustled as if small creatures were following him and spying on him. Even the polka-dotted pink mushrooms looked purple and poisonous in the muted light.
And that feeling of being watched . . . ugh.
The spooky feeling walked like a specter a few feet behind Dipper as he hung "BEHOLD" and "THIS WAY TO THE MYSTERY SHACK" signs on a dozen trees.
Then on the thirteenth one—he struck the nail and heard a dull metallic clunk! The nail made no impression. "What?" Dipper tapped with the hammer, raising hollow, echoing clanks, as if it wasn't a tree at all, but a metal tank of some kind. And then he noticed that the last hammer tap had—cracked the tree?
No, it had slightly swiveled a concealed door about half an inch. He got his fingers into the crack and tugged. A curved section of metal painted and textured to look like bark creaked open on hinges, trailing dust and cobwebs. It revealed a recessed compartment, and in it rested what looked like a World War II-surplus electronic device with silver switches, an array of pushbuttons, a gauge of some kind, even what looked like a mini-TV screen.
Wondering what it could be, Dipper reached in and cautiously flipped the switches. A grating sound and a startled "Mmaa!" made him look to the side. Another secret panel, this one in the ground, had slid open, startling the same goat that he had found on his bed. It trotted off as he walked over to investigate.
And, in an underground metal chest, its cover blurred with dust, spiderwebs, and a few centipedes and beetles, lay a curious book bound in reddish-brown leather with brass corner protectors . . . and a misshapen gold-colored silhouette of a human hand showing a big black 3 in place of a title.
Forgetting completely about hanging the rest of the arrows, Dipper sat down to read it. It was . . . a strange book, handwritten, with plenty of hand-drawn sketches. The author spoke of the strange and wondrous secrets of Gravity Falls. He or she sketched bizarre creatures like nothing on earth: Floating eyeballs! (So Wendy wasn't exaggerating) Giant vampire bats—a sketch of a whole flock close to the Gravity Falls Water Tower! Moth Man! Not only did the text have the carefully-drawn pictures, but it described each bizarre anomaly. And further on, the tone turned dark, almost paranoid, and the author warned that there was no one in Gravity Falls whom one could trust.
Skimming rather than reading, Dipper flipped the pages. Some were stained with—blood? The handwriting sometimes deteriorated. Then a two-page spread, one beginning "I'm being watched! TRUST NO ONE." Opposite that, a circle inscribed with strange symbols and the frightened note I am not the one drawing this! Am I? Something about saving the world—"or lose my life—"
And the next pages . . . all the rest of the book, about two-thirds of it . . . just blank. As if something had happened. As if the Author had . . . just disappeared.
Dipper took a deep breath. Something stirred deep inside him. Nothing, he felt, would ever be the same again. He did not know why, but he sensed that something drastic had just altered forever. Reality was no longer what he'd always thought it was.
In some stories the hero fights a dragon or flies a spaceship in a lonely charge against an alien fleet.
The results, good or bad, deep-fried knight or triumphant space pilot, always change someone's life.
This discovery was quite small by comparison. No dragons to fight. Just a strange heavy book found in a strange lonely hiding place with a strange, disturbing message. No big battle. Very lonely, very quiet, very secret.
Everything is different now. . . .
What he saw in that book had just changed Dipper Pines's life forever.
Then Mabel, who had been trailing the goat, popped up behind him and yelled, "Hello! What'cha reading, some nerd thing?" and scared the daylights out of him.
He had to explain it all to Mabel.
So, OK, be fair.
The moment changed both of their lives forever.
And that afternoon—not earlier that morning, not the morning before that, or the one before that, but late in the afternoon of an overcast day—
Mabel spilled some beans. And then, then, finally—
A brand-new day began.
The End