Chapter Text
Dipper wasn’t enjoying his summer.
Not like Mabel, his twin sister, who saw the bright side of things (and was currently rolling down a hill of grass with glee). He had trouble coping with their new - significantly more outdoorsy - environment. And with his Grunkle Stan around as their guardian, it just made things worse. Dipper swatted at the woodpecker using him as a perch and tried to get more comfortable against the pine tree he was leaning against. Maybe he could get used to everything.
“BOO!”
“GAH!!!” Dipper screamed, then growled. Or not.
“Hahaha! You should have seen the look on your face!” Stan chuckled, holding a monster mask in his hands.
Dipper grumbled as he went back to his book, ignoring his Grunkle’s barks of laughter as Stan went back to the house.
… … …
Dipper was sweeping the floor when Stan came over to give him a task.
“Go out into the woods and hammer these signs up,” Stan said and threw him a bunch of timber with “Mysteries and wonder!” “World Famous!” “This way!” and a bunch more exclamations about the Mystery Shack painted on it. He barely caught them.
“But why in the woods? I don’t think people would—”
“Just do it kid.”
Dipper muttered unhappy things about his Great-uncle as he hammered the signs into the trees. This could be the worst summer ever , he thought. He went over to the last tree and placed the final sign onto the bark.
Clang!
His hammer bounced off as it hit metal.
Dipper frowned. “That’s weird….” Trees weren’t supposed to be made of metal. He rapped his knuckles against the tree, listening to the clanging noise a little more carefully. When he heard the clanging again, he noticed that it sounded hollow.
Curious hands started feeling around the tree, then found the hidden edge of a hatch and pulled it open. A cloud of dust billowed out and caused Dipper to cough and wave his hand in front of his face in order to dispel it.
Inside the small compartment the hatch had been concealing was an old box shaped instrument. A few buttons were scattered over the machine. What stood out most, however, were the two levers that were sticking up. Dipper, curious as he was, pulled one, then the other.
His ears picked up a sound from behind him, the sound of a trap door opening. Turning around, the hammer abandoned, he cautiously went over to see what was inside the compartment that he’d somehow just opened.
It was a dusty book.
Dipper was disappointed to find out it was just an old journal of some kind, but as the questions bubbled in his brain, his curiosity grew. A shiny, six-fingered hand with the number 3 drawn in black marker shone at him from the front cover. He flicked through the pages, fascinated by what was inside. The inside of the front cover was unfortunately damaged, leaving the author of the book a mystery, but the rest of the pages -- covered in drawings of strange creatures and notes detailing their existences -- were virtually intact.
Why would a book be hidden in such a way if it weren’t important? Does it have some significance of some kind? Does it have some secret that the author never wanted anyone else to know? Who is the author? Dipper frowned at the flood of questions in his mind.
Snap.
Dipper turned around, his heartbeat suddenly picking up speed as he caught sight of a blurry figure in the distance, just outside the clearing. The shadows of the trees kept Dipper from seeing the figure clearly.
For a moment they stood, looking at each other. Then the figure darted away and vanished into the trees above. Dipper flinched at the sudden movement, half-thinking that the figure might come after him.
But it didn’t, and the forest returned to silence.
After a moment, Dipper got himself together and left the woods, journal in hand. Thinking.
What happened the following few days were a bit hard to describe. Mabel’s new “boyfriend,” while Dipper had been suspicions of him being a zombie, was actually a bunch of gnomes trying to find a new queen to replace their departed one. And apparently, they wanted their new queen to be Mabel.
Dipper wasn’t really happy with their decision.
This ended with them being chased around the forest and back to the Shack by a huge gnome-monster made of up pretty much every single gnome in the forest (that Dipper knew of, anyway). Fortunately for them, they had found a gnome’s weakness… a leaf blower. Who knew, right?
Gnomes went flying everywhere, and then they scurried back to the forest, squealing like wild animals, while Jeff yelled something about them having their revenge.
Dipper didn’t really think much of it, though -- they were just gnomes; there was no way that they’d be able to really do anything to them. Especially since he and Mabel knew the leaf blower could handle them no problem.
The twins were tired and sore, leaves and tree branches knotted in their hair -- Dipper had lost his hat sometime during the chase -- as they stepped into the shack, too tired to notice their Grunkle staring at them from the counter.
“Hey, what happened to you two?” Stan raised an eyebrow. “Did you trip over a log out in the woods or something?”
“We got attacked by gnomes who wanted to make me their queen!” Mabel replied. “We drove them off with the leaf blower. It was awesome!” she yelled, throwing her hands in the air.
“Gnomes?” Stan snorted. “That’s just as crazy as those Owl-Man rumors going around.”
“Owl-Man?” Dipper paused in the middle of picking leaves out of his hair, looking at his Grunkle in confusion. “You mean that Bigfoot monster that people up here are always talking about?”
“Yeah, that’s him.” Stan finished counting the money from that day’s group of tourists and put it back in the register. “You kids make sure to be careful if you go out into the woods, all right? That’s his territory, and he might not take kindly to strangers.” He paused. “That being said, uh...how about you two each pick something from the gift shop?”
A smile burst across Mabel's face. "Really?"
Dipper was another story, folding his arms. "What's the catch?"
"The catch is to do it before I change my mind - now take something,” Stan said gruffly with a dismissive wave of the hand.
Smiling, the Twins went to search for whatever took their fancy. Mabel happily took a grappling hook, yelling out the item’s name and putting high above her head as if she was going to use it right then and there. Dipper saw something he found to be just as -- and maybe a little more -- useful to him, a blue and white hat with a blue pine tree on the front.
Better than the one I had.
He put the new hat on over his still leaf-ridden head and sent a quick glance at a nearby mirror. “That should do the trick.”
Dipper smiled at his Grunkle, who seems too busy doing work, waving a hand at him when he tried to thank him. Dipper wondered if he'd ever figure his Great-uncle out.
Later that very night, with Mabel fast asleep in the bed across the room, Dipper skimmed the strange book he found in the woods. It didn’t take him long before he found himself back at the blank pages that took up the last eighth of the book.
He frowned, ignoring the entry he’d made earlier when Mabel had been getting to bed. Why did it stop so abruptly? Did something happen to the author?
Dipper felt his heart stop when he heard the rustling outside his window. He quickly scrambled out of bed and went to look through the triangle-shaped window and out into the darkness that lurked outside, wondering if it might have been the figure he’d seen in the woods making the noise outside his window.
Maybe it was coming back to take him and drag him away from his family?
Dipper shook his head. “There’s no way that it’s coming in here. Whatever it is is probably terrified of Grunkle Stan.” He let out a quiet, nervous laugh as he got back into bed. “Yeah, that’s probably it.”
Dipper yawned and rolled over, facing away from the window as he closed his eyes and finally fell asleep, hugging the journal against his chest -- the one thing that had made summer suddenly very interesting. There was no way that he was going to let it out of his sight -- not even when he was unconscious.
Because the day had exhausted him so, Dipper didn’t notice the rustling noise come again as he drifted off completely.
A strange, fluffy-haired figure peered into the room through the window, turning his head this way and that in order to get a good look at the two figures in the attic. After a moment, the figure silently pulled back, then leapt off the side of the house and rolled to a stop on the lawn below before taking off at a run into the trees, disappearing from sight.
The kitchen light on the first floor almost seemed to waver for a moment as the figure in the room rose from the table. It was flicked off a moment later, however, blending the entire house with the darkness outside as the last member of the household disappeared from the first floor.