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Dinner was on the table, the candles were lit, there were a bunch of good scents in the air, and Dipper Pines was completely unable to enjoy any of it.
Which, granted, may have had something to do with the ghost currently approaching Norman and screaming until the candles turned into something more like flamethrowers and the glassware on the table rattled. Or maybe it had to do with the fact that, no matter what Norman said, the ghost wasn’t calming down and Dipper could actually see them for once. There may have also been a bit of frustration and terror involved, possibly a little bit of fear-sweating.
Dipper wasn’t going to tell anyone when it came to that last bit of the equation.
After what had happened when he was fifteen, meeting Norman and then promptly almost getting killed by a ghost possessing the other boy, Dipper had thought he wouldn’t ever be scared of ghosts again. Not even the once-upon-a-time threat of Bill Cipher had matched up to the terror that had been that summer.
The ghost shrieked again and Norman had to duck as they swiped a hand at him.
“You guys should leave!” came a new voice, a barely substantial body barreling between Dipper and Norman, pushing them gently back. The new arrival had white hair and green eyes, wearing a black body-covering suit. Things worked a little differently for ghosts but, even though the newcomer looked like one, Dipper thought they were a guy. “I can handle this!” the white-haired ghost told them, shooting a smile over his shoulder as he made himself a barrier between the other ghost and them.
“No,” Norman frowned, his hands clenching into determined fists at his side. “Not if you’re just going to attack her!”
The white-haired ghost stopped and looked at him. “What?”
“You’ve got weapons,” Norman’s nerves were easy to spot, Dipper thought as he stepped forward and ran his fingers over his boyfriend’s pulse, rubbing his thumb over the back of his hand. “You’re going to hurt her.”
“Not cool, man,” Dipper added in.
The white-haired ghost opened his mouth, then turned towards the ghost that had invaded their dinner. “I don’t have weapons,” he said, turning back to look at them. “I have something that I put ghosts inside of to return them to the place they’re supposed to be, if they don’t have a territory on Earth.”
“Okay,” Norman was still frowning, though it wasn’t as angry anymore. “So we can use that as ‘Plan B’. For now, what you can do is sit and listen as I talk to her and try to fix what is wrong.” He stepped forward and nudged the white-haired ghost out of the way. “Hey,” he caught the other ghost’s attention again, trying once more to get her to calm down.
Her eyes looked like dark holes in her face, empty and gaping voids. This time, it seemed like she was actually paying attention to Norman as he held up his hands in a placating gesture. “My name is Norman,” he told her. “Did we do something to piss you off?”
She hesitated for a moment, then shook her head.
“Okay,” Norman nodded. “Did someone else in this building do something?”
She shook her head again.
“But something is making you angry,” Norman said after a moment of thought. “Did someone make you angry who isn’t here anymore?”
She nodded and the candles flared again.
Norman’s frown returned. “Okay. So…Is it the date?”
The ghost seemed to shiver before she nodded once more, drifting towards the calendar they had hanging on the wall next to the stove. Her hand pressed against it, then pushed through it and she started sobbing.
Dipper almost wanted to cry with her. “Norman?” he spoke up quietly, watching her droop to the floor and continue to sob while pressed against the wall. “Could you ask what her name is?”
“Yeah,” Norman nodded again, then kissed Dipper’s cheek and moved over to the ghost. “What’s your name?” he kneeled down and smiled at her when she looked up. “Sorry, we probably seem kind of rude, just panicking and not asking your name or anything.”
That got something that almost looked like a smile out of her. With the expression still on her face, she reached up to the wall and scratched some letters into the paint. When she was done, the wall had the name, ‘Serena’ spelled out on it. The ghost – Serena, apparently – turned back to Norman and nodded when he raised an eyebrow.
“Serena,” Norman looked at the wall. “Is your body in the wall?”
Serena nodded again.
“So here’s what we’re going to do,” Norman took a deep breath. “We’re going to call the police and get your body removed from the wall.” He turned back to the white-haired ghost and sighed. “You can take her to a place where ghosts are safe?”
“Yeah,” the white-haired ghost nodded.
“Take her there without putting her into anything,” Norman rolled his eyes. “Serena, could you go with him?” he took her hands when she reached for him. “We’re going to get you properly buried and we’ll try to find whoever put you into the wall. Could you point to exactly where in the wall you are?”
While she pressed her hands into the wall, Norman stood up and grabbed one of the cast-iron skillets from the drying rack. They had a set of them, a ‘You’ve moved in together!’ gift from Norman’s mother. Still watching Serena out of the corner of his eye, Norman ran the almost dry pan under the faucet for a few seconds, then turned completely back to the wall. “Alright,” he told her. “Please move.”
Serena dutifully moved to the side.
Without any warnings other than that, Norman flung the pan into the wall, aiming the sharpest edge of it forward.
Norman jumped a little, despite having known it was coming. Serena watched in approval, pressing her hands together over her chest. The white-haired ghost only stared, eyes moving over all of them as he seemed to try and puzzle it all together. Green eyes turned to look at Dipper.
“Yeah,” Dipper grinned at him. “It’s like that sometimes.”
He turned to one of the cupboards while Norman wandered off to get his phone to call the police. One of Serena’s bones was sticking out of the hole in the wall and Dipper did his best to ignore it as he pulled out some of the Tupperware they kept. Carefully, he scooped a good amount of the food they’d had prepared into each container. Once that was done, he got it all settled into a cloth grocery bag and slung it over his shoulder as Norman came over with a pair of shoes in each hand, his phone pinned between his shoulder and his cheek.
Dipper took his own shoes and slipped them on, kicking against the ground to get his feet into them. “Ready to go?” he asked Norman once the other had gotten off the phone. “I got dinner into containers,” he jostled the bag.
“Oh, good,” Norman pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. “Serena?”
She turned to him, then looked at the one with white hair.
“If you go with him, he can take you somewhere safe to be.” Norman pinned the guy with a look. Dipper knew that look. It was the same one Norman had used on Courtney once, when she’d gone too far with a joke. The one that said, ‘you had better get this right’ as his words demanded an action to make up for how someone had messed up. “Right?”
“Right,” the ghost said, eyes wide as he looked at Norman.
Dipper could almost sympathize. Norman didn’t seem like he could be intimidating until he suddenly just was. Dude was thin as a rail and tall but he looked more like someone who would be found in a comic shop than any sort of threat. It was only by having lived through some things with him that Dipper knew how terrifying Norman could get at times.
“When you’ve gotten her to safety, come back here and talk to us,” Norman practically ordered. “I want to know about the place ghosts go to.”
“Okay,” the white-haired ghost nodded. “I think I can even bring someone…Well, it might be easier for you to go to him…Anyway.” He paused, then nodded. “My name’s Danny, by the way.” He looked at Serena, then held out a hand to her. “I promise I will keep you safe,” he told her.
Norman nodded approvingly.
“The pan slipped out of my hands,” Norman told the police officer later. “I guess I was just…Gesturing too wildly while it was still wet from being washed. We were talking about school and work and I lost my grip on it. It hit the wall and when I went to look at the damage, I saw a skull.”
The officer nodded, giving Norman a bit of an odd look but not saying anything. She marked it down in her notebook and looked at Dipper. “What’s in the bag?”
“Oh,” Dipper held it forward for her to look at. “Our dinner. Tonight was a date night and when he saw the skull, I figured we shouldn’t stay in the apartment after you guys arrived. We came out here to wait.”
“Everything else as it was when you found the bones?” she asked both of them.
Dipper and Norman nodded, both of them saying yes at the same time. “We figured we’d probably be better off staying in a hotel room tonight,” Norman added. “Let you guys do your work.”
“Good man,” she nodded, then sighed. “Why do you seem so calm about all of this?”
“Well,” they exchanged a glance. “I’m from Blithe Hollow,” Norman explained. “And he spends every summer in Gravity Falls. I guess we’re just sort of used to weird and frightening.”
The officer’s eyes softened for a moment and she tucked her notebook away. “You boys have a good date night, y’hear?” she looked around for a moment, catching the gaze of another officer. “You have a car to get to a good hotel?”
“We were just going to catch a bus,” Dipper shrugged a shoulder.
“No,” the officer gestured for her coworker to come over. “This is officer Daniels, he can give you boys a ride to the hotel.”
Officer Daniels had jogged over by the time she said that and he nodded. “Oh, definitely,” he nodded. “Not a problem,” he smiled at them. “Officer Mills,” he laughed a little, guiding them to his car. “She sometimes mothers the people she meets, mostly when they seem to be having a hard night. Have you guys had stuff like this happen often?”
“Too often,” Dipper confirmed, Norman nodding along with his words.
The dinner was, at it turned out, still just as good cold as it was when it was hot.
All in all, a good date night in. Dipper gave it a nine out of ten. He could have gone without finding the missing body of Serena McRory, but it was better for her to be found than not.
She had, after all, been missing since a couple of years after her immigration. The apartment complex may have undergone some drastic changes over the years, but the wall without any plumbing in it had been left alone other than getting a new layer of paint.
Her husband had murdered her.
Dipper and Norman spent the night in a hotel room.
Danny was interesting, to say the least. Half-ghosts were a thing, he was one, and there were a couple of others.
There was also a ghost named Clockwork that wanted to meet them, but he apparently understood that they’d had a bit of a trying evening. He would come speak with them later.
Serena had been immediately taken in by a ghost in a medieval castle, according to Danny. Her name was Dora and she was recovering from her own brother being controlling and awful to her, as he had been in life and had continued to be in death.
Norman calmed down when he heard about how Dora’s brother had been gotten rid of.
Serena would be safe there.