Chapter Text
“Cow!” came a gleeful shout from the seat next to Dipper, though he barely had time to register it before he felt a swift punch in the gut. He let out a quick oof of pain before gathering himself enough to respond.
“Mabel--” he started.
“--Whoops! Missed your shoulder. Sorry, bro-bro.”
“Mabel, that’s not how this game works! You’re only supposed to punch people when you see a Volkswagen!” he said.
“Not if you’re using punch bingo cards!” she said gleefully, waving one of the road trip-game punchouts they’d found buried in the gift shop last week. He snatched it from her hand.
“Cows… stop sign… lumber truck… Mabel, if you keep using this card I’ll be black-and-blue before we get back to the Mystery Shack -- you could find these anywhere! Except… maybe not the.. raccoon playing banjo?” He looked up. “Why is that even on here?”
“Bonus points!” Mabel said, snatching back the card. Dipper groaned.
“What?” said Stan from the front of the car. “Can’t put up with some sibling-induced pain? Just spot something yourself and punch her back."
“I don’t even have a card!" Dipper protested. “That’s not fair! How is that fair?”
“Shoulda grabbed one before we left,” Stan said, right as Mabel punched Dipper in the arm.
“Bush!” she shouted.
“What kind of a sadistic person made these cards in the first place?” Dipper said. “This stuff is everywhere!”
Stan just laughed. “Probably someone who didn’t realize they’d be repurposed. For violence.” Then his face went serious for a second. “That’s true of most things, though.”
Dipper and Mabel looked at each other nervously, until Stan turned around to look at them both.
“What, you’ve never gotten in a pillow fight?”
Dipper was about to laugh, but his eyes widened before he had the chance.
“Watch the road, watch the road!”
Stan’s head whipped back to the windshield, and he let out a panicked “Woah!” as he tried desperately to turn back onto the pavement in time, the car having begun to veer off. For a second, it looked like he’d managed it. But then came an ominous clunk from the back, and the entire vehicle shook before he slammed on the brakes.
“Soggy oyster crackers!” He yelled, punching the steering wheel.
“...That sounds like a flat tire,” Dipper said, nervously. “Should we get the spare?”
No response.
“Grunkle Stan, you do have a spare, right?” Mabel asked.
“Why would I have a thing like that?” he said, throwing his hands up in the air. “We’re just going to have to make this one work.”
But a quick examination of the tire was all it took for all three of them to tell that, no matter how hard they tried, they weren’t going to “make it work.” The entire thing was shredded, having hit a rock on the side of the road as Stan swerved. Dipper sighed. Looks like they weren’t going to be getting back to the Mystery Shack anytime soon after all.
It felt kind of weird to have spent the weekend away from it in the first place, like staying away from your home away from home. But the week before, the Shack’s cash register had been destroyed in… well, an incident. That he was still guiltily feeling responsible for. Who knew that the psychic slugs from the forest would exude corrosive ectoplasm? The journal hadn’t mentioned that.
Unfortunately, cash registers -- despite their importance to money-grubbing great-uncles -- weren’t exactly a common commodity in Gravity Falls. Unwilling to order an "expensive" brand-new one, Stan had tracked down a parts dealer only slightly-less disreputable than himself to negotiate with. The catch? He lived and worked a couple hours out from Gravity Falls, and wanted Stan to come and get the thing himself. And while he’d usually be able to find a place to park the twins for a few days, their options had dwindled suspiciously quickly. Soos was spending the weekend with Melody; Wendy’s family was on a camping trip; and Dipper and Mabel weren’t particularly interested in spending a few nights with anybody else in town.
Which is how the twins had ended up as accomplices in the wild cash register-chase and stayed in some motels the past few nights that Dipper felt generous describing as “sketchy”. They were finally on their way home -- but for the unexpected hold-up.
“We could check for some tires there!” Mabel said, jolting Dipper from his thoughts. She was pointing at a sign tacked to a tree not far from them that read “Yard Sale”, complete with arrow pointing up a winding dirt driveway about a hundred feet away.
“Well that’s suspiciously convenient,” Stan said.
“Not a bad idea, though,” Dipper said.
“What, a tire we can pay for?”
“Or one generously gifted to travelers in need,” Mabel said cheerfully.
“You’re giving ‘em too much credit, kid,” Stan said. “These people are literally selling their junk.”
“Generously and possibly unknowingly gifted…”
“That’s my girl!” he said, rubbing her head.“-- Ok, let’s do this.”
* * *
“Dipper look at this!”
Mabel was holding up a gaudily ornate silvery-plated hand-mirror and poking the shiny surface with her finger as she looked into it.
“Mabel, that thing’s creepy,” he said, sighing as he set down the dusty copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes he’d been checking out. Grunkle Stan had momentarily abandoned them to browse the merchandise, maintaining they’d be a good distraction for the people in charge should things go awry.
“No it’s not,” she said. “It’s beautiful!”
“...It looks like it belonged to a Transylvanian count that murdered people in their sleep. Plus, it has a crack in the middle”
She pouted momentarily. “You never like my stuff.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re planning on buying that.”
“Why not?” she said. “I like it.”
Almost instantly after the words had left her mouth, the old man who’d first greeted them as being in charge of the sale was at their side.
Well that’s not suspicious at ALL… Dipper thought.
“Interesting choice, young lady,” the man said. “Yes, interesting, interesting…”
They both looked at him, Dipper skeptical and Mabel pleased.
“Thanks,” she said. “How much are you--”
“--KIDS. We’re going! Now!”
Stan sped past them, tire in hand (or rather, arms, as he was technically hugging it…) and dashing down the driveway. He shoved into Dipper slightly as he did so, causing him to stumble.
“Coming!” Mabel shouted, and raced to catch him. Dipper was about to join them, but his momentary loss of balance was just enough time for the old guy to grab his shoulder and clench it tightly.
“AH!” he shouted, jumping about a foot in the air -- it took him a moment to realize it was just the old man. “...oh… um.... you’ll be wanting us to… pay for that? I’ve got some quarters in my pocket but…”
“Consider it on the house,” he said to him. “I’d rather see the old thing leave.”
Dipper’s eyes widened. “So there is something wrong with it! And you’re trying to trick Ma-- my sister -- into leaving with it?
The old man eyed him curiously. “You’re suspicious of it…” he muttered. “No one’s ever suspicious of it, especially not one so… young.”
“What’s it going to do, suck out her soul?” Dipper asked frantically. “Trick her by showing her heart’s desire?”
“Oh, nothing like that… though her heart does have something to do with it,” the man chuckled. “But so long as nothing gets out of hand, you both should be fine. Just wait and see.”
Dipper frowned at him, about to ask more, when he was interrupted by a loud car horn and Grunkle Stan’s shout from the base of the hill.
“Kid! We’re leaving!”
He hesitated. The yard sale man just smiled at him. “Have a nice day, boy,” he said, waving.
Dipper wasn’t so sure it was sincere.
* * *
“I still don’t like the feeling of this,” Dipper muttered, glancing at the mirror once last time as he and Mabel piled back into the car.
“Relax,” Mabel said cheerfully, “we’ve seen a lot this summer, but right now? We’re outside the Gravity Falls city limits. If something weird’s going on, it wouldn’t be all the way out here. I haven’t seen anything but cows, and they’re not very suspicious.” Suddenly she frowned “...Usually.”
“I guess you’re right,” Dipper said. “There’s not really anything else unusual out here...”
Suddenly, he felt a punch in the arm.
“Mabel, why--?”
“--Raccoon playing the banjo!”