Chapter Text
Arc 1: Owl Mom and Con Dad
Chapter 1: Twinception
Dipper sulked the entire long bus ride from Piedmont, California, to Gravity Falls, Oregon. Mabel did her best to put on an optimistic face, whispering about their fellow bus passengers or the towns they rode through or the gum stuck to the underside of the seat, but he could tell she was really just as apprehensive as he was to be spending their whole summer with a stranger.
It wasn’t as if they had no idea who their Great-Uncle Stanford was when their parents decided to send them to a cheaper alternative than summer camp. (And at least Mom and Dad had decided making Dipper and Mabel listen to their arguments all summer wouldn’t do them any good—) Stanford Pines mailed them cards for their birthdays and for Hanukkah, always with a check enclosed. There was a picture of a greying man in a fez holding them as babies and playing keep-away with their Grandpa Shermie in their baby scrapbook.
But other than that, their Great-Uncle was a family cryptid. He never wrote more than funny well-wishes in holiday cards, and he never called Mom and Dad. He apparently had called their Great-Nana Pines monthly up until she died, but other than babysitting Dad while he was in high school and college, Great-Uncle Stanford had barely interacted with his older brother’s family in decades.
Grandpa Shermie said he was anti-social and not very good at talking to people by himself. He had looked sad while he said it, though, which Dipper thought was suspicious.
Dipper kind of wished they could have gone to stay with Grandpa Shermie instead, but he was recovering from hip surgery and the doctors said he didn’t need two preteens running around “being rambunctious”. Admittedly, Dipper thought to himself as his twin sister laid upside-down in her seat and kicked the headrest, Mabel had no idea how to be anything but rambunctious. So maybe the doctors had a point.
So here they were on their way to some town in middle-of-nowhere Oregon, to stay with a great-uncle they had never met. Joy of joys.
They had been driving for well over nine hours now, and the sun was beginning to fall low in the sky, casting everything in shades of orange. He and his sister had slept the first few hours before breaking into their packed lunch box and devouring everything inside. That lunch seemed very far away now.
At first there had been regular stops in towns along the bus route, but the last stop had been an hour and a half ago. Since then, they had passed nothing but wilderness. Dipper’s nose wrinkled as the bus drove steadily through miles of forest. “Ugh, will we even have internet or cell service at Great-Uncle Stanford’s place?”
Mabel made a muffled sound in her upside-down position. “At least we’ll probably have running water?” she said.
Dipper grimaced through the window at all the wilderness. “Here’s to hoping he has bathrooms and not an outhouse.”
“A-greed!” Mabel said fervently.
She hummed, knocking her heels against the headrest. “At least his shop thing should be cool. It’s the Mysterious Cabin In the Woods, or something, right?”
“The Mystery Shack,” Dipper corrected.
Their parents had laughed over it together, back when they still laughed over things together. Apparently their great-uncle had turned his house into a cryptid themed tourist trap. His dad thought it was a riot. Dad had visited Gravity Falls as a teenager a few times himself, and he said he had enjoyed helping Great-Uncle Stanford with exhibits and tours. Dipper was undecided. It would be cool if it was actual unknown stuff, but he also knew his dad’s sense of humor, so it was probably all joke items, which was the sort of cryptid stuff that annoyed Dipper because it took away from the real cryptological studies and made people think it was all fake.
Cryptology was a real field of science! They had it as a minor and a major area of study at the University of Oregon and everything! The coolest thing Dipper had ever discovered was that the scientist who had established cryptology as a real area of study and more than a kooky pseudo-science was actually a Dr. Pines who had been active sometime in the 1970s. His last ever publication had been a textbook-sized research volume known as The Astonishing Anomalies of the Pacific Northwest in 1983.
Dipper had never been able to get his hands on it because it was a college-level text and thus ruinously expensive to someone not even in high school yet, but even only having read a few chapter excerpts online fired his imagination and made him admire the mysterious Dr. Pines even more. What if they were related? That would be so cool! Of course, Pines was hardly an uncommon name, so it wasn’t as if it was at all likely, but a kid could dream, couldn’t he? Dipper’s secret dream was to be the next big Dr. Pines!
So it would be awesome if Great-Uncle Stanford’s tourist trap museum had real cryptids and scientific evidence, but he wasn’t about to get his hopes up.
“Next stop, Gravity Falls,” the bus driver called out from the front of the interstate bus. Mabel groaned and put her hands over her head, letting herself fall to the floor so she could scramble upright.
“Joy,” Dipper muttered. “The fresh air.” He maintained he could absolutely get fresh air at home, and his parents were just trying to get the twins out from underfoot by sending them to the middle of nowhere.
Mabel giggled and elbowed him. “Maybe there’s a library in town,” she suggested cheerfully.
The bus had pulled to a stop at a random patch of forest that only vaguely resembled a bus stop because of the sign half-eaten by a pine tree and the rickety wooden bench sat next to it. Glancing out the window, they could see a stocky, broad-shouldered figure in a familiar red fez looking up at the Speedy Beaver in a black suit, hands on his hips. The twins pulled their luggage down the aisle of the long, empty bus and clattered down the steps. They were greeted with a wide grin and a booming voice.
“Hey, kiddos! I haven’t seen you since you were football sized!”
They blinked up at the old man grinning at them, his glasses glinting. Great-Uncle Stanford was shorter than Grandpa Shermie, but somehow managed to look taller regardless—maybe it was just that he stood straighter and was broader shouldered. He looked younger than Dipper had expected, with only a few wrinkles around his eyes and shiny white teeth. The hair poking out from under the red fez was a dark greyish color that still had echoes of brown. It oddly seemed less grey than it had been in the pictures of Dipper and Mabel as newborns. Maybe he dyed it?
He stuck out both hands, crossed over one another. “I’m your Great-Uncle Stan, nice to meetcha again! Mabel and Mason, right?”
Mabel was delighted by this enthusiastic greeting, and immediately began to shake the hand offered to her. “Hi, Great-Uncle Stanford!” she said cheekily.
Their uncle grimaced. “Yeesh, do I look like a Stanford? Just call me Stan, kids. Less of a mouthful.”
“Great-Uncle Stan,” Mabel parroted obediently. She wrinkled her nose. “Nah, it doesn’t flow as well. How about Grunkle Stan? So it’s all nice and short!”
The newly dubbed Grunkle Stan laughed. “Sure, whatever you want, kiddo!”
Dipper was more hesitant, but he had grasped the older man’s spare hand to shake as well. Even Stan’s hands were less wrinkly than Grandpa Shermie’s. If Dipper had passed him on the street, he would have guessed this man to be closer to forty-five or fifty than to sixty, despite the fact that Dipper was vaguely aware his sixty-eight-year-old Grandpa Shermie was less than a decade older than Grunkle Stan.
He was also wearing a large amber ring on the middle finger of the hand Dipper was shaking. It was oddly out of place with the rest of his outfit, but somehow managed to complete his look anyway.
“I, um, actually prefer Dipper,” he stammered out as their uncle let go of their hands. He was startled by a pair of high voices, speaking one after the other.
“So I don’t have two M-name buddies?”
“Dipper’s a weird thing to be called.”
Now Dipper was looking down, and he met two pairs of impossibly golden eyes, like polished coins. The two children had impish faces not unlike his or Mabel’s as little kids, and their hair was a familiar tangle of brown curls. Each identical little girl had a kerchief tied around her head like a little bonnet along with a summery dress—one girl in red and one in yellow, with the red dress one wearing a black kerchief on her head and the other wearing a green kerchief—and Dipper already knew before Mabel began squee-ing quietly in his ear that his sister was about to go nuclear.
“I didn’t know we had cousins Grunkle Stan!!” Mabel squealed, bouncing on her toes.
Their uncle smiled sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Heh, yeah. These are Marilyn and Sophie.”
“We’re six,” the girl in red and black said self-importantly, holding up one hand and splaying her fingers out. Dipper was about to remark that you should hold up two hands to count to six, when he realized she had six fingers.
“Woah!” Dipper exclaimed, leaning forward and catching his cousin’s hand in his own. “Do you have six fingers on this hand?”
“We gottem on all our hands ‘n’ feet,” the girl replied. She let Dipper manhandle her palm for a minute as he looked at her fingers. Then she leaned forward as well, and said in a loud conspiratorial whisper, “Daddy calls us his Sixer babies. Cause we’re Sixers like the scientist ‘splorer in the Sixer and Lee stories.”
Dipper blinked, letting go of his cousin’s hand. “The what?”
The twin in a yellow dress and green kerchief spoke. “They’re bedtime stories. Daddy made us picture books when we were babies, and now we get a new one every year on our birthdays.” She leaned forward over her twin’s shoulder. “Why is your nickname Dipper? Lyn is short for Marilyn ‘cause Lyn says Mary is a boring nickname—” the twin in the red dress elbowed her and Dipper supposed she must be Lyn. Which would make the twin in green and yellow Sophie. “And Stan is short for Stanford and Eda is short for Edalyn, but Dipper isn’t short for anything.”
Dipper laughed. “It’s not that kind of nickname,” he said, taking off his hat and pushing his bangs up his forehead with a palm. “See? I’m the Big Dipper.”
The two six-year-olds oohed. “You have stars on your head!” Lyn exclaimed in astonishment, pointing. “That’s so cool!” Dipper grinned. That was a much nicer reaction than other kids usually gave him.
Then there was a honk from a car horn, and everyone turned to see a woman with greying orange hair and the same golden eyes as the twins sitting in the driver’s seat of a red vintage car. She had a black lace bandeau wrapped around her ears and over the top of her head and she had long gold-laquered nails that were sharp at the tips almost like claws as she waved at them while honking the car horn again. A pair of large amber earrings that matched Grunkle Stan's ring peeked out from under the edges of the bandeau.
“Get in, losers, we’re going out to eat!”
“Mom!” the six-year-old twins shrieked, turning to wave wildly at their mother. Grunkle Stan laughed.
“Kids, this is Eda. She’s the twins’ mom, and one of my partners.”
Dipper blinked at the odd phrasing. “You mean she works at the Mystery Shack?”
Grunkle Stan scratched his neck. “Eh, she does sometimes.”
“So we have a Grunkle, cute little cousins, and a Grauntie!” Mabel gasped out. She marched up to the tall, willowy woman unfolding herself from the car. Dipper thought she might be taller than Grunkle Stan. Mabel stuck out a hand to shake. “I’m Mabel, Grauntie Eda!”
Aunt Eda blinked and then grinned widely, taking her hand and pumping it up and down. “I like you, kid! You’re weird!”
The twin girls jumped around their mother and cousin excitedly.
“Momma, Momma, Cousin Mason has stars on his forehead!”
“Momma, Cousin Mason goes by Dipper like the con-stell-a-tion. Isn’t that cool!?”
Their mom made placating hand gestures, her long lacquered golden nails glittering in the daylight.
“Yeah, yeah, I got it you gremlins. Now why don’t you help Daddy get your cousins’ luggage into the car.”
The little twins choruses out an “Okay!” and scurried off. Aunt Eda grinned at Dipper.
“Don’t mind them. They’re just a bit overexcited.”
Dipper smiled back uncertainty.
Aunt Eda had one very sharp gold tooth amidst a shiny white smile that also seemed to have teeth that were pointer than they should be. Up close, his great-uncle’s wife was definitely taller than Grunkle Stan. The heels didn’t help, but even without them he pegged her as at least half a foot taller. She looked around fifty, which was weirdly old to have little kids. Honestly, both of them seemed too old to have six-year-old kids.
Combined with the gold tooth, otherworldly golden eyes and the probably-dyed neon orange hair, Aunt Eda’s whole…everything gave her a mysterious aura, like an anomaly come to life.
“Alright!” Grunkle Stan boomed. Did he ever speak in a lower volume? “Everybody pile in!”
Their grunkle took the keys from where Aunt Eda was twirling them around one thin, white finger and kissed her on the cheek. Aunt Eda laughed and began to walk over to the passenger door of the car.
“Come on, Dip-Dop! Get in the car!” his sister shouted.
Dipper was spurred out of his paralysis and, in a flurry of gravel and dirt, scrambled into the car. Lyn and Sophie both had booster seats to one side of the long booth seat in the back of the car. Mabel was perched in the middle between the two of them and an empty spot, leaning over to hold the door open for her twin brother. Dipper climbed in and pulled the door shut. It was cramped, but it wasn’t unbearable. There was enough space Dipper could avoid Mabel’s pointy elbows, which was all he really cared about.
Grunkle Stan turned around in the front seat once the car was rumbling under their feet. Thankfully, he spoke a bit quieter in the car. “Okay, since it’s you two’s first day in town you get to pick dinner. Mexican, barbeque, or grease? Err, there’s also a couple Asian places in the mall too I guess.”
“What about Yumberjacks!?” Lyn demanded.
“Sweetie, that’s fast food. We were gonna eat at a restaurant.”
The little girl flopped back into her booster seat, pouting.
“I like barbeque,” Dipper ventured to say.
“Yeah! Authentic barbeque in lumberjack country!” Mabel said, stars in her eyes.
Lyn, still pouting, muttered, “I guess that’s okay.”
Grunkle Stan laughed. “Smokey Joe’s it is!” he said, changing gears and turning the car around with a roar from the engine.
* * *
Their first arrival at the Mystery Shack was not particularly dramatic or theatrical. They were full from barbeque and an excess of fries and had begun to yawn. It was weird how doing nothing all day was so strenuous, Dipper thought to himself.
Grunkle Stan led them in through the darkened gift shop, their six-year-old cousins bouncing behind them. Dipper and Mabel had squinted as Grunkle Stan suddenly flipped a light switch before hurrying to follow him. Dipper looked around with a frown, still not certain how he felt about his great-uncle’s profession. This stuff all looked super hokey. As he glanced forward, Mabel gave him a small, reassuring smile.
“Gift shop is off limits after closing,” Grunkle Stan grunted. “It’s when I do restocking and count up the cash drawer. You can visit my office whenever if you need me, but no going inside without me. It’s through the museum, so I’ll show you that tomorrow. So you know, that door leads to the basement level of the museum. There’s arcade games down there.”
He gestured to a shadowed doorway draped with red curtains, a wooden sign proclaiming MUSEUM nailed overhead. It was to the right of the back door of the gift shop, which was a simple swinging door that had its own sign, this one saying EMPLOYEES ONLY. It didn’t entirely fit the doorway, only coming up to the top of Grunkle Stan’s head and not quite reaching the floor.
Grunkle Stan reached over the door and fumbled for a minute. They heard a clink and then the door swung open. Once the entire group had paraded through, the door swung shut and Grunkle Stan re-hooked the chain lock right up at the top of the door.
“Isn’t it awkward doing that every time?” Dipper asked. “A real door would be better security.”
Their Grunkle shrugged. “Eh, it’s mostly so these gremlins don’t get into the gift shop unsupervised. I’ll know if there’s a break in—we’ve got cameras, alarms, the works.”
“We have a state-of-the-art security system,” Aunt Eda said with an odd, sly emphasis. Dipper frowned up at her.
Meanwhile, Mabel was distracted by the centerpiece of the living room, a large aquarium with an axolotl inside. Atop the aquarium case was a massive ship in a bottle and a collection of shrunken heads. “Ooh,” Mabel cooed, visibly resisting the urge to tap on the glass. “So cute! It’s one of those pink salamander dealios.”
“That’s just Frills,” Lyn said dismissively. “He’s an ax-o-lotl, he doesn’t do much.”
“Do you wanna know a secret?” Dipper turned to see Sophie staring at him solemnly. She leaned forward and said in an eerie whisper, “Frills isn’t just a salamander. It’s the alpha and omega. An interdimensional being beyond all time and space.”
Her golden eyes gleamed with secret knowledge.
Dipper’s mouth fell open. “Uh…what?”
Grunkle Stan and Aunt Eda both burst out laughing. “Okay, kid, easy on the tall tales, there,” Eda giggle-snorted.
“Yer ma’s right, Soph, museum’s closed. Save the fibs for the tourists, okay?”
…or maybe that gleam had only been six-year-old mischief.
His cousin just stuck her tongue out at her parents. Aunt Eda stuck her tongue out back at her.
Undeterred by the interruption, Lyn grabbed Mabel’s hand and pointed. “That’s the dining corner, even though we also eat at the kitchen table too. We’ll prob’ly eat in here more with you guys visiting ‘cause this table is bigger. And that in the corner is the fireplace. It powers the house.”
She was pointing at a large potbellied stove in the corner of the room, between the dining area and the aquarium. A black pipe went from the back of it into the wall. Through the grate, Dipper could see flames burning. Dipper wondered what Lyn meant when she said it powered the house. Well—she was only six, so maybe she just didn’t quite understand electricity yet.
Lyn was continuing to pull Mabel by the hand, her twin trailing behind and nodding along. “And over there is the TV. We can use the remote whenever, but Mom and Dad have veto power.”
“Dang right we do,” Aunt Eda muttered.
The television was a big old-fashioned box one in a wooden frame, sat low next to the aquarium under a weird boxy glass light fixture protruding above it. On the wall beside it was an owl-themed cuckoo clock next to the open doorway through which Dipper could see another door to the house. The front door? Back door? There was also a staircase leading upwards, barely visible against the outer wall opposite the cuckoo clock.
Opposite the television was a high-backed green fainting couch crammed against the wall, a fat old yellow flannel armchair next to it. A T-Rex skull that could not possibly be real sat between them like it was a coffee table, a freaking doily thrown on top like that made it at all normal. Dipper was about to ask about the honest-to-god T-Rex skull when Sophie piped up again.
“There’s also the crystal ball in the museum, but it’s normally set to nature doc-mentaries to freak out the tourists,” Sophie added.
Dipper opened his mouth to ask at least one of the questions he now had bubbling up his throat, but before he could get there Grunkle Stan said, “Yeah, I tricked out a crystal ball with a projector so it looks like a TV. I’ll show you tomorrow. For now, I think it’s everyone’s bedtime.”
Both the little twin girls pouted. “Aww, but Daddy!” Lyn whined. “We were giving them the tour!”
“The only buts I want are your butts in bed. We’ll do a tour tomorrow when your Cousin Mabel isn’t dead on her feet. Now come on, time to hit the hay.”
Sure enough, Mabel was yawning and droopy-eyed. Seeing her yawn widely only made Dipper yawn as well. He still wanted his questions answered, but…Grunkle Stan was right. They would still be there in the morning.
“Your dad’s right, brats, it’s bed time,” Aunt Eda said fondly, urging the twins out of the room and herding them towards the staircase.
“Do we still get story time?” Sophie asked.
“Yeah, lil’sixer, I’ll be up as soon as I’ve got your cousins settled,” Grunkle Stan said with a warm smile. He turned back to Dipper and Mabel as the younger set of twins was sent upstairs.
“Up on the second floor is my room, a bathroom, and the twins’ room. The attic is your aunt’s space and is off limits to all kids, your cousins included. My bedroom is also off limits, but you can come knock if you need me. Frankly, though, I’m usually downstairs, so check here or in my office first. You kids are in the guest room down on this floor.”
He led them into the little foyer off of the living room. As they left the living room, Dipper was startled by the vertical-pupiled eye carved into the top of the green fainting couch’s backboard. The eye seemed to follow him as he stepped into the foyer.
The foyer had that exit door Dipper had noticed before, but it also connected to a kitchen they could see through an open doorway. There was a third door as well, wedged between the staircase, the corner, and the exit door.
Grunkle Stan gestured to the door leading outside. “This door is kept locked. You go out, make sure you lock it behind you.”
The two tweens nodded dutifully. Their great-uncle just grunted and led them through the little door behind the staircase and into a long hallway with striped purple wallpaper that was faded and ragged, torn in places but nobody had bothered to patch it. They were led with their luggage down a long hallway. About halfway down there was a door right next to a corner. Around the corner was a second narrower hallway, this one darkened and dusty looking. It split off while the main hallway continued onwards. Grunkle Stan gestured again, this time to the door and the darkened hallway.
“This here is the parlor. It’s mostly a play room for the kiddos, so if you ever want to make a mess do it in here. Don’t mess with the piano in there, though, that’s mine and my other partner's and if you break it you’ll be working to pay me back for the rest of the summer. Now, your room is down that way.” He grimaced. “Sorry about the light. My handyman was the one who did most of the cleaning, and he hasn’t fixed the hall light yet. I’ll make sure it’s done before the end of the week, though, don’t worry.”
Apprehensive now, Dipper and Mabel followed him down the long, shadowed corridor. There was a mirror opposite the light switch at the end of the hallway, and the hall was lined with a few photographs. One was a wedding picture of Grandpa Shermie and their Grandma.
Their bedroom door was right next to a grandfather clock almost as tall as the ceiling. The door itself looked like it had been closed up at some point, wallpapered over and covered in siding, before being reopened and tidied up. The wallpaper looked newly redone on the patch of wall beside the grandfather clock, with no tears like the ones that were scattered across the rest of the hallways. It gave the door a kind of unique disguised feeling, like they could take the doorknob out and it would disappear into the walls.
This spot had also been dusted, with the cobwebs cleared out. Dipper hoped their bedroom was equally clean. Mabel gave him a dubious look, maintaining her polite smile by the skin of her teeth.
Grunkle Stan opened the door and flipped a switch, gesturing for the two niblings to precede him inside. Dipper clenched his fists on his duffle strap and strode forward, determined to be brave since Mabel was suddenly hesitant.
The room was long and narrow, with a small walled off wooden square to one side obscuring their view of the room itself. It was illuminated by a single pendant light hanging down in the middle of the room. You had to press the button to turn it on or off at the top of the stairs, which Dipper thought meant they should have it off before bedtime and use lamps, or it would turn into a pain quickly going up and down stairs in the dark. The room itself seemed to have been recently painted a sandy off-white color. The smell wasn’t very strong, but Dipper could still catch a whiff of new paint with the door open.
They had to go down three steps to get into the room: it must be partly underground. Sure enough, the only window Dipper could see was small and high in one corner of the room. At the foot of the stairs Dipper opened the door to the walled off section and discovered it was a closet. It was only lit by a bare bulb with a dangling chain. On the other side of the stairs was a high shelf piled with buckets of paint and industrial glue.
The window was opposite the entrance, at the far end of the long room. It was above a bed with a round headboard that had a yellow flower painted on it and a pink blanket thrown across haphazardly—it was clearly meant to be Mabel’s bed. Dipper’s bed was opposite hers, sans headboard but with a decorative portrait of a sailing ship on the wall beside it and a long, low table beside the pillow to put things on. It had a blue blanket tossed onto it.
Between their beds was a high shelf above the table (probably a former coffee table). Mabel’s bed also had its own side table cabinet with little drawers. The table and side cabinet had a kerosene lamp and a big lamp that looked like it might have been taken from another area of the house respectively. The high shelf was bare, but Dipper spied a wooden crate wedged under the coffee table he could use as a stool. His binoculars could go up there, and maybe some of his books or his flashlight.
Between Mabel’s bed and the extruding closet was a set of shelves, four slats high, that looked like they had only mostly been cleaned off. The top shelf was still covered in boxes, some labelled things like Summer/Halloween Decorations and Taxidermy Stuffing, and some unidentified. Dipper’s side of the room was pretty bare. There was a half-deconstructed arcade game against the wall with a sheet thrown over it, and under the paint and glue shelf by the door was a small trio of boxes and a broom leaning against the stairs.
Grunkle Stan had let them take in the room in silence, loitering at the base of the stairs. When the pair began putting their suitcases and bags down, he spoke again. “Uh, you’ll be the only ones using the ground floor bathroom. I installed one on the second floor when Eda moved in. To get to your bathroom go back to the main hallway and go right, then follow the walls until you get to a door in the wall right before a dead end.”
Dipper thought that was a weird way of putting it, considering the main hallway had seemed straight except for their little offshoot.
Their grunkle clapped his hands together. “Well! I’ll let you get settled in. If you need me, you know where the staircase to the second floor is. Eh, goodnight!”
The twins were left in stunned silence as the door creaked shut.
“Well, at least we have a bathroom to ourselves!” Mabel said, ever the optimist. “And this room is like a secret bunker!” She rubbed the wall. “So smooth,” she said in her Mabel way.
“That was so weird, though,” Dipper said. “And I have so many questions now!”
Mabel rolled her eyes as she dug out her night clothes and toothbrush. “Like what?”
Dipper began pacing, he was so excited. “What’s up with Aunt Eda? Does she wear contacts or is that her natural eye color? Did you notice she has fangs—real ones, not just the gold one? Why does Grunkle Stan look like he could be twenty years or more younger than Grandpa Shermie when he’s not even ten years younger? Is the T-Rex skull real and if it is where on earth did he get one? What’s with all those weird things Lyn and Sophie said!? Also, Grunkle Stan told literally nobody he was married and had twin kids, because you know Grandpa Shermie would have insisted we send them presents like Grunkle Stan sent us all these years! Why would he hide that? Is Aunt Eda a criminal? Is she a vampire? Are our cousins half-vampire!?” Dipper flung his hands up in the air.
Mabel grasped his hands in her own and pulled them both to sit down on her new bed. “Ooo-kay, Dipper, let’s take a pause there. You know how Grandpa Shermie is always saying Grunkle Stan is antisocial and reclusive and stuff. Maybe he just didn’t think about it. Maybe he was afraid people would find his kids weird because they have extra fingers.”
Dipper conceded the point briefly, before another thought occurred to him. “That’s another thing. Grandpa Shermie always talks about how Great-Uncle Stanford is this antisocial loner, like he’s a hermit who only interacts with people to make money or over the phone. But…he was actually really…friendly? He reminded me a lot of you, actually, and I just can’t see you as some reclusive shut-in.”
Mabel shrugged. “I dunno.” Stars filled her eyes. “Ooh, do you think the power of love changed him? That would be so romantic!”
Dipper snorted. “I don’t know about—…that,” he said. His sentence was interrupted with a long yawn and he shook his head.
“We can talk more tomorrow. For now I think I just want to sleep.”
Mabel yawned as well. “Yeah, me too.” She gave him an impish smile. “Want to see if we can find the bathroom?”
“After the way Grunkle Stan phrased the directions, I am suddenly less confident in my ability to find it alone, so yes.”
