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It was a normal morning at the Mystery Shack, which probably should have been a cause for concern. Gilbert and Vincent, however, had not been there long enough to be concerned at the quiet—though they had been there long enough to appreciate the peace and quiet of the morning, and to take advantage of it best they could.
This meant that the brothers were currently sitting on the floor of the living room, a bowl of popcorn between them and Ducktective playing on the television. It was quiet, and it was peaceful, and so they really shouldn’t have been surprised when there was a clattering of footsteps and, a few moments later, Oz Vessalius, Alice’s part-time employee, burst through the door, hanging onto the doorframe as though a particularly strong gust of wind could knock him over.
“I’ve found a secret room!” he declared.
“Wow! Really?” Gilbert asked, sitting straight up and staring at the older boy.
“Why didn’t you tell Alice?” Vincent added.
“Alice is in the gift shop, which is a longer run,” Oz replied. “Besides, I thought you kids would want to know! You’ve been getting into a lot of wacky scrapes since you got here, haven’t you?”
Gilbert and Vincent exchanged glances—they had, indeed, gotten into several “wacky scrapes”, mostly caused by them attempting to confirm or deny things they read in the journal they’d found, or, on one terrifying occasion, Oz being absolutely insane about robots. None of their adventures so far, however, had involved secrets held within the Mystery Shack. Neither brother had even considered that there might be any there—after all, if there were, Alice probably would have tried to make money off of them—but now that the possibility had been thrown like a ball into the room, they both jumped at it, teeth first.
“Where is it?” Gilbert asked as he and Vincent scrambled to their feet.
“Where, where?” Vincent echoed, quickly concealing a handful of popcorn into his pocket.
Oz grinned at them. “Come on, I’ll show you,” he said, and then proceeded to lead them down the hallway, around a corner that they were sure they’d never seen before to where the wallpaper was peeling off of an old door. “I was sweeping up the place,” said Oz, “when I found this. I think we wallpapered over it on accident a few years ago and then just forgot that it ever had existed. It’s pretty spooky inside!”
“I’m not scared of anything,” said Vincent.
Gilbert, who was scared of everything, carefully stepped behind Oz. Oz patted his head before opening the door with a flourish.
“Ta da~!” he sang out, and Vincent grabbed Gilbert by the arm and pulled him inside, shining a flashlight until it landed on a humanoid figure and Gil screamed.
Vincent and Oz both laughed, and Oz headed over into the room and flicked a light switch on the wall a few times before it turned on, illuminating what appeared to be nearly a dozen people, dead still and a little shiny under the ceiling lights. Gilbert continued screaming, backing away towards the door, but Oz caught him by the collar of his shirt.
“Don’t be afraid, Gil,” he said reasonably. “They’re only wax statues, see? We keep the corpses in the basement.”
“Really?” Vincent said, enthused.
“Nah, we don’t have a basement.” This, of course, was a blatant and bald-faced lie, but neither brother knew that, and both looked disappointed. “Anyway! Wax museum. Want a tour?”
“Sure,” said Vincent. “They’re cool.”
“They’re creepy,” Gilbert argued, peering around at the statues. “Especially that one!”
“Hey!” said Alice Baskerville from where she was standing between two statues, gnawing at a bone. “That’s rude, kid.”
Gilbert screamed again, and Vincent doubled over laughing.
“You sure got here fast, Alice,” said Oz cheerfully.
“This used to be one of my best attractions,” she replied. “Until people stopped buying tickets. We’ve got Wax Edgar and Edwin from Holy Knight, we’ve got Wax Glen Baskerville, Wax Ivel and Arrond from Fruits of Uncertainty, Wax Glen Baskerville, Wax Sir Caudwell and Sir Walter from Recollections of Black and Gold, Wax Glen Baskerville, Wax Glen Baskerville, Wax Lacie Baskerville, and my favorite, in a place of honor right by the window, Wax B-Rabbi—AUUGH?!”
Where Alice had pointed, there was nothing but a puddle of melted wax.
“Who left the window blinds open?! Was it you, Wax Jack Vessalius?! I knew I should have made you into candles!”
“You probably did that, Alice,” said Oz. “You need to learn how to clean up after yourself, you know?”
“I do clean up after myself,” Alice grumbled. “Poor Wax B-Rabbit…you were my favorite…”
“Maybe we can try to fix it?” Oz offered. “What did B-Rabbit look like?”
“What did…” All of a sudden, the other three were shocked to see, Alice’s eyes had filled with tears. “You can’t fix this, Oz!” she shouted. “It’s gone forever!”
“Alice—”
“It’s gone!”
Alice ran from the room, Oz hurrying in her wake, Gilbert and Vincent left blinking in their absence.
“...Maybe we could make her a new statue?” Gilbert said after a moment.
“Of what? A bunny?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. She said it was called a B-Rabbit, right?”
“Yeah, but she also didn’t tell Oz what it looked like, so it might not have been an actual rabbit.”
They were silent for a few moments before a wicked grin split Vincent’s face.
“Hey, Gil,” he said. “You know how you thought she was an especially creepy statue?”
“...Yes?”
“Let’s take that B-Rabbit wax,” he said, “and build an Alice statue out of it.”
Gilbert beamed at him. “That’s a great idea, Vince! I’m sure Alice will love it!”
Vincent, who had merely thought it would be a funny thing to do, preened. The brothers headed off to get some buckles to scoop the wax into, and spent the rest of the day carefully sculpting a wax Alice statue, complete with so much glitter that, in the sunlight, the statue’s black hair looked almost white.
“Hey, guys!” Alice’s voice came. “Has anyone seen my pants?”
Gilbert and Vincent looked at each other, and then at the statue, dressed in clothes stolen from Alice’s closet, and then back at each other.
“No!” they yelled back in unison.
“Oz! Where the fuck are my nice pants?!”
“I don’t know!”
“Stop stealing my clothes, you asshole!”
“I haven’t taken your clothes in weeks!”
Gilbert and Vincent looked at the statue again. It was, in fact, wearing nice pants.
“...She won’t notice, right?” Gilbert said.
“Yeah, probably not.”
“Alice!” Gilbert called. “We made something for you!”
“Cool! I’ll come look at it after I find my fucking pants !”
“Your pants might be gone forever maybe,” Vincent called. “Like maybe someone else is wearing them!”
“Fu—freaking Oz!”
“Not Oz!” Gilbert called. “Um. Can you come in here, please?”
“I don’t have any pants!”
“There were multiple pairs in your closet!” yelled Vincent, who had no fear of God, man, or Alice.
“What the fu—heck were you doing in my closet?!”
“It was Vincent’s idea!”
“Hey!”
Alice stormed in, still wearing the clothes she’d been in earlier, and then stopped short when she saw the wax statue. “What…Alyss…?” she murmured.
“Ta da! We made a wax statue of you!” Gilbert said cheerfully.
“What do you think?” added Vincent.
Alice grinned. “I think,” she said, “that the wax museum is back in business!”
“I cannot believe, ” said Oz at the ticket booth, “that this many people showed up.”
“Alice probably bribed them, or something,” said Vincent.
Oz smirked. “She bribed me,” he said, waving a dollar in the air.
“Me too,” admitted Gilbert, pulling out his own dollar.
“And me,” Vincent snickered.
The three of them grinned at each other as Alice, up on the makeshift stage in front of the Mystery Shack, tapped the microphone and waited for everyone to calm down before beginning to speak.
“Good morning gamers!” she crowed. “I welcome you, one and all, to the Grand Re-Opening of the Mystery Shack’s Wax Museum! As you know, I always bring the people of this fair town novelties and befuddlements, the likes of which the world has never known. But enough about me. Behold... me!”
With a flourish, Alice pulled a sparkling red cloth off of the wax statue of herself, whirling around dramatically and putting the cloth around her shoulders, revealing that it had been an excellent cloak all along.
“My lovely summer helpers, Gilbert and Vincent Nightray, have constructed his wax figurine of me,” she continued gleefully, “and it will be the crowning jewel of the wax museum!”
“Where’s the pizza?” shouted a young man who appeared to be a few years older than Oz.
“We aren’t your mother, Elliot!” Oz shouted back at him.
“How did you know his name?” Vincent whispered. “I’ve never seen him around before.”
“That’s what his friend called him when they came in,” Oz whispered back. “They were arguing about getting lost, or something.”
“Yeah, well, the flyer said there was free pizza!” a teenager with shaggy black hair yelled in Oz’s direction.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Alice said bravely, despite the fact that there was a flyer reading Free Pizza hanging not twenty feet away from her.
She was hit with a good deal of boo ing and several complaints about false advertising—really, though, it was Alice, what else did you expect—and once everyone had gone, they were left with a profit, a great deal of wax figures, and an Oz who was laughing so hard he’d nearly fallen out of his seat.
“You’re all terrible,” said Alice, hoisting up the wax statue of herself. “Wax Alice is my new best friend.”
“Alice, no!” Oz laughed, but she merely flipped him off and carried the statue off into the Mystery Shack. “Oh…” Oz said, finally sitting up, “this is going to be good. You boys want to see how long she can keep it up?”
“Keep it up?”
“Having a wax statue of herself as a best friend.” Oz grinned wickedly. “If that’s her best friend now, then the statue can work without a paycheck. Now, who wants to go out for ice cream?”
They came back from ice-cream that night to first a silent and dark Mystery Shack before the warm, humid night air was broken by a horrible scream.
“Alice!” Oz shouted, running for the door, Gilbert and Vincent at his heels. They burst inside and hurried to the source of the screaming, which was the living room, where they’d been watching television earlier, where Alice was knelt over the headless body of her wax statue, tears streaking down her face.
“Oz! Somebody’s murdered Wax Alice!” she shouted. “Why weren’t you here ?!”
“I didn’t think there was anything dangerous in the house…I’m so sorry,” Oz said, kneeling down beside her and taking her into his arms. Alice cried into his shoulder as Gilbert and Vincent stared at the scene in horror.
“There’s a murderer in the Mystery Shack!” said Gilbert.
“Not just a murderer!” Vincent added. “A Headhunter !”
They stared at each other for a few seconds.
“We have to find him!”
After investigating the living room, Gil and Vince had found a set of footsteps in the carpet (though the trail was lost once it led to the hardwood floor of the hallway) and an axe hidden behind one of the chairs, and were making a list of everyone Alice had ever upset who might want to kill a wax version of her after discovering that the axe bore no fingerprints whatsoever.
The list was very, very, very long.
Because of this, Gilbert and Vincent got a list of everyone she’d pissed off at the wax museum’s Grand Re-Opening, which was congruent with the list of attendees at the Grand Re-Opening, due entirely, Gilbert and Vincent agreed, to the fact that she had lied about providing free pizza. Because of this, they narrowed it further to the people who’d been the most angry, asked around, discovered the axe they’d found was left-handed, and then found out that the first person who’d brought up the missing pizza, the teenager named Elliot, was, in fact, left-handed, so, not bothering to ask Alice and Oz their permission, they hurried off to find Elliot, sure that he was the Headhunter they were looking for.
Elliot and his friend with the shaggy black hair were in the process of throwing what appeared to be a scarlet tape measure against a tree multiple times as Elliot bitched about first food we get the chance to eat after getting stranded here and fucking scammers.
“Excuse me!” Gilbert called as he and Vincent hurried up. “Excuse me!”
“Yeah? Who’re you?” asked the one named Elliot.
“I’m Vincent Nightray,” said Vincent, “and this is my older brother Gilbert.”
Elliot started choking so hard his face turned purple and he fell over.
“Oh, are you here on vacation?” asked the black-haired boy. “Do you have any other siblings?”
“Yeah, there’s Fred and Claude and Ernest and Vanessa,” said Vincent, “who are all evil—”
“Evil?” said Elliot, sounding upset.
“Yeah, they hate us,” Gilbert told him. “They like to beat us up even when we haven’t done anything wrong…even though Vincent does do lots of things wrong, but they don’t know about that! And if they find out I say I did it!”
“And they sent us away here for the summer,” said Vincent, “cause there’s a new baby so they don’t want us around anymore.”
“The baby’s cute, though,” said Gilbert.
“Elliot’ll probably grow up just as horrible as the rest of them.”
“I like him,” Gilbert said decisively, and that was that, though the teenager named Elliot was now lying face-down on the ground, strange noises coming out of him.
“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” said the black-haired teenager with a smile. “My name is Leo Baskerville, and this is my fiance, Elliot. We’re on a…road trip, because most of his family doesn’t approve of our relationship and also they suck extremely, but we got stranded here. It’s nice to meet you.”
“They don’t suck extremely,” said Elliot the fiance into the ground. “They suck moderately, all combined.”
“Maybe let’s talk about your shitty family members versus your not-shitty family members later,” suggested Leo. “Gilbert and Vincent came to ask us something, right?”
“You’re right.” Elliot pushed himself up and sat on the ground. “But—before you ask—Gilbert, Vincent…what do you think of your little brother Elliot? Do…do you love him?”
He looked as though he was desperate for an answer.
“No,” said Vincent. “I only love Gil.”
“I like him a lot,” said Gilbert. “He’s three, and he’s adorable. Now that he’s not teething anymore, though, we aren’t allowed to spend much time with him anymore.”
“What does teething have to do with it?” Elliot asked.
“Sometimes they had us wash our hands and let him bite our fingers,” said Vincent. “When they didn’t have any clean teething rings, or whatever. It was annoying.”
“It was cute.”
“You just like babies.”
“Elliot’s a good baby. He cried when we were sent away, you know,” added Gilbert.
“I think that was because I stepped on his foot, not because he was sad we were going away, though.”
“Vincent! That’s mean!”
“So is sending us to another country for indentured servitude!”
“Another country?!” Elliot and Leo chorused in horror.
“That fucking tape measure—!” added Elliot, furious, and he stomped on it.
“This is why we don’t go through other people’s things, Elliot,” sighed Leo. Then he smacked him on the arm. “Also! Don’t swear in front of small children!”
“Vince is eleven!” said Gilbert. “And I’m twelve, we’re almost teenagers! We aren’t small children!”
“Yeah, well, I’m nineteen,” said Elliot. “So fuck that.”
Leo smacked him again. “Language!”
“Whatever. What was it you wanted to ask me?”
“Someone killed Alice’s wax statue of herself last night by chopping off its head,” said Gilbert. “We built it for her specially…was it you? Are you the Headhunter?”
“I hate the implication here that wax statues are alive,” said Leo.
“They used to call me the Headhunter back in high school,” said Elliot, “because I ranked all the boys in our class based on who gave the best head.”
“Gross,” said Vincent in admiration.
“I hate that you know what I meant.”
“That was,” Leo sighed, “a really dick move of you.”
“What, still pissy that you were number 69?”
“There weren’t even 69 gay, bi, or pan boys in our class !”
“Does that mean you killed the Alice statue?” asked Gilbert.
“Nah, Leo and I were in the park together all night,” said Elliot. “Besides, why would I behead a wax statue?”
“Revenge for the fake pizza flyers?” Gilbert suggested.
“I mean, yeah, that was shitty of them, but not enough reason to kill. Or, you know, break into your house to commit property destruction.”
“You would absolutely do that,” said Leo.
“No, if I had eggs I’d egg their house,” said Elliot, “but I don’t, because we have no fucking money, and no fucking food.” He paused. “Freaking. No freaking money and no freaking food.”
“See, this is why I never let you around my siblings,” said Leo.
“If you want you could come have dinner with us after we find the Headhunter,” Gilbert offered.
“No way in hell,” Elliot snapped. “Why would I want to have dinner with a stupid traitor like you?”
Gilbert drew back in shock; Leo smacked Elliot, hard.
“How dare you!” shouted Vincent.
“Leave it alone, Vince,” said Gilbert, who knew that he was stupid, who often still resented his brother, his own blood—who knew he was a traitor. “Let’s just—go talk to Alice and Oz about what we know.”
“Elliot, apologize!” said Leo, but Gilbert and Vincent were already running away.
When they got back to the Mystery Shack, Alice and Oz had set up a funeral for Wax Alice. All of the other wax figures had been made attendees, and Gilbert and Vincent sat in the front row as Alice eulogized the wax statue of herself before leaving in tears, Oz following after her with a rueful grin to the boys and a tissue box.
“I don’t get it,” said Vincent. “I mean, we looked all around town…we had multiple suspects…we even found clues …why couldn’t we find the killer?”
“An axe and a shoe with a hole in it,” Gilbert muttered. “Some clues.”
“...Yeah.” Vincent peered down at the headless statue in the coffin and froze. “Gil?”
“What?”
“The Wax Alice statue has a hole in its shoe.”
“What? Um, yeah, all of the wax figures do…for their stands,” Gilbert said. “Why?”
“What has no fingerprints and holes in their shoes?”
“Your mother,” came a voice behind them, and the brothers whipped around to see the wax figures standing up, blocking the exit.
Gilbert screamed, throwing himself between the wax figures and Vincent—as stupid and traitorous a brother as he was, as much as he still resented poor Vincent—he was loathe to see him hurt and would lay down his life without hesitation to protect him. Gilbert had never thought these things through very much—he was not one for self-reflection, and it had never occurred to him that it was strange to both loathe his brother and be willing to die for him without hesitation. When they were very young, he had risked his life for Vincent on the regular; now that they were on the cusp of middle school he moved to do so again without thought or hesitation.
“Congratulations, my two amateur sleuths,” said Wax Ivel. “You’ve uncovered the truth…and now we’re going to bury you!”
“You…you’re…”
“Congratulations!” said Wax Jack Vessalius. A long, wax gold braid hung over his shoulder, and something about the brightness of his smile seemed entirely fake, as though the personality did not fit the body it was in. “You’ve discovered our dirty little secret.”
The brothers slowly backed away as all of the wax figures—other than Wax Alice in her casket—slow-clapped at them and advanced forward.
“Y-you’re alive…” Gilbert stuttered out, “are, are, are you magic?”
“Magic!” laughed Wax Ivel. “As if! No…we’re cursed!”
“Cursed?!”
“Long ago, we were all sculpted by a mad scientist and her loyal assistant,” began one of the Glen Baskervilles, “cursed to be wax statues by day, and to walk by ni…”
“Blah, blah, blah, I don’t care , ” said Vincent. “Why’d you kill the Wax Alice statue? My brother and I worked hard on it!”
“Why, we thought it was the real Alice!” said Jack Vessalius. “See, she’s the one who sealed us up in there, years and years ago, after an unfortunate encounter with the B-Rabbit statue, so when we got free…”
“We tried to kill her,” said another Glen Baskerville statue. “But we got the wrong Alice.”
“You…really tried to kill…Alice…?” Gilbert repeated numbly, imagining returning from getting ice cream to see Alice’s real body lain out on the floor, bloody, headless. What would have happened to them? Would Oz have become their summer guardian, or would they have been sent back to the Nightrays, or would they simply have been abandoned again?
“You were right all along, Gil…” Vincent murmured. “Wax statues really are scary…”
“Enough!” said Wax Ivel. “Now that you know our secret, it’s time for you to die!”
“Vincent, run!” Gilbert screamed, grabbing a candle from Wax Alice’s memorial and holding it defensively in front of him.
“I’m not leaving you!”
“Save yourself! Run!”
“No!”
“How adorable,” taunted Wax Jack Vessalius. “Too bad it won’t save you now…”
“And next time,” added Wax Lacie Baskerville, “we’ll get the real Alice.”
The first of the wax figures was upon them; Gilbert swung his candle wildly and was as shocked as the Wax Arrond when his arm came clean off.
“Vince!” Gilbert shrieked. “Fire! Fire kills them!”
Behind Gilbert, Vincent grinned wickedly.
By the time the sun came up the next morning, the boys had nearly finished chipping all of the melted and re-dried wax up, each delighting in the memories of killing an entire room of human-shaped things that had dared attack his brother, Elliot the fiance had been hammering at the door of the Mystery Shack for nearly an hour, and Oz had been amusing himself by trying to guess where he’d come from for almost as long. Alice, who seemed to have recovered completely from her recent bereavement, was tossing out ideas of different items for Oz to try and sell Elliot, but Elliot didn’t seem interested.
This was too bad, because until Elliot went away and Oz was no longer by the front door, Gilbert and Vincent couldn’t move from the former wax museum, or else their guardians would absolutely notice that they definitely hadn’t gone to bed the night before, and though Alice was fine with them staying up all hours of the night, Oz would scold them. So they were stuck.
Elliot, who was ignoring Oz entirely, continued hammering on the (open) door, and, eventually, Gilbert and Vincent decided to make a dash for it, rushing upstairs to quickly change (“Remember,” said Vincent, “if anyone asks why we’re all beaten up we got into a fistfight—”) and head back downstairs, not even having to feign their yawns.
“What’s the mean teenager doing here, Oz?” asked Vincent, making himself look as sweet and innocent as possible.
“He says he has something he wants to say to you guys,” Oz replied. “I’ve been telling him you’re still asleep and trying to convince him to take a tour in the meantime, but he keeps insulting my taste in books.”
“It’s not books,” snapped Elliot, “you just get attached to the worst characters. —Hey, Gilbert, Vincent. I’ve got something to say to you.”
Gilbert folded his arms and stepped in front of Vincent. “What?”
“I’m sorry for what I said yesterday,” Elliot told him. “It was uncalled for and inaccurate. I was just…frustrated…with myself and my relationship with one of my own older brothers, and it wasn’t fair of me to take it out on you.”
“It’s okay,” said Gilbert. “I’m sorry for accusing you of murder. It was actually the other wax figures, and Vince and I killed them all.”
Elliot and Oz both raised their eyebrows at that one, though neither commented.
“...Vincent,” said Elliot, “I’m sorry for insulting your brother. It was rude of me.”
Vincent just scowled at him. “I don’t forgive you,” he said, “and I don’t like you. You’re just like the Nightrays!”
“...Maybe,” said Elliot. “I’ll be in town for a while, though…Leo’s and my, uh, mode of transportation broke down, so we don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Well,” said Oz, “assuming you don’t pick on my charges, you and Leo both are welcome in the Mystery Shack anytime! We’ve got a discount for handsome young men, after all.”
“As if I’d hang around someone with as bad a taste in characters as you?” Elliot scoffed. “Anyway. Bye.”
He headed off without a look back, and Oz turned to face Gilbert and Vincent. “Now,” he said, “what’s this about killing all our wax statues…?”