Chapter Text
People don’t often hang around Gravity Falls Skatepark, since it is hidden from the main parts of town. Occasionally, however, local teen groups would find it and use it to escape the approaching death of summer signaled by “back-to-school” sales. One of these local teen groups—consisting of friends Wendy, Tambry, Lee, Nate, Dipper, and Thompson—was hanging around there one day. Nearby the skate park, there was a very tall tree where an odd-looking bird nested, and the five friends had dared Thompson to climb that tree to annoy that bird because, “Hey, why not?”
They all sat on different sides of the ramp (except for Lee, who was skating on said ramp), chanting “FIGHT THE BIRD! FIGHT THE BIRD! FIGHT THE BIRD!” as Thompson got closer and closer to its nest. At one point, Dipper stopped chanting and turned to Wendy.
“You ever feel sorry for him?” he asked her.
Wendy raised an eyebrow. “Who? For Thompson? Not really. He’s used to this kind of stuff.”
“I know that,” he said. “But doesn’t he ever, you know, stand up for himself every now and then?”
“I’d be surprised if he ever did, to be honest.”
Dipper looked over at Thompson, who was now only feet away from the bird, cooing “Nice birdy, pretty birdy,” as he reached his hand out to poke it.
“Maybe he just needs a friend,” Dipper thought aloud. “Someone who’s willing to stand up for him…” He and Wendy looked at each other in silence, as if they were telecommuting the idea that maybe, just maybe, they could be the ones who stand up for Thompson, call the whole shenanigan off, and possibly set off a chain of events that would boost his confidence and overall quality of life.
But the thought passed, and they immediately went back to chanting.
“FIGHT THE BIRD! FIGHT THE BIRD! FIGHT THE BIRD!”
As soon as Thompson touched the bird, however, it snapped at his finger and flapped in his face. He jerked his hand back, lost his balance, and fell.
Miraculously, he didn’t get hurt on the way down. Okay, he may have hit a few branches, but he wasn’t seriously injured. He landed on his back and gave a thumbs up.
“I poked it!”
Wendy rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Like barely. Hopefully Tambry got the video?” Tambry looked up from her phone.
“Sorry, guys. Had to answer a text midway through.” She finished up the last of her text, voicing the concluding sentence “Luv u 2, Rawrbz” aloud before pressing send.
“Wait,” Dipper looked confused. “Didn’t Nate have his—”
“I did, but…” Nate held up his own phone, showing only an empty battery icon on his screen. Lee returned from his skating just in time to witness this moment.
“I told you to charge it last night, Einstein!” he laughed.
“Whatever,” Nate retorted, but his tone was playful.
Despite not getting a video of that day’s hijinks, everyone agreed that it was still a pretty good day. They got their things together to go their separate ways for the rest of that day, as everyone had somewhere to be. Well, everyone except for Thompson, but he could probably just think of something to do when he got home.
But just as they were leaving, they came across a rather large, square storm drain—which resembled a trapdoor more than anything else—to the side of the skate ramps. Dipper was the first to point this oddity out.
“What’s that over there?” he asked.
Everyone glanced in the direction he was pointing. Wendy answered first.
“Oh yeah, that’s just one of the sewers around here,” she said nonchalantly.
“Isn’t that where that one Carla chick died?” Nate chimed in.
“Who?”
“He means Carla Winters,” Wendy explained to Dipper. “Legend has it that a group of girls pushed her down there six years ago, and then one by one they were all found dead.” Then mock-theatrically, she exaggerated the last line: “The same way she died.”
“Aren’t you, like, supposed to copy and paste that story online a lot, too?” asked Lee.
“Only if her ghost is actually there,” said Tambry. “Which it isn’t. ”
That’s when they all turned towards Thompson, even Tambry despite what she just said. He gulped. He knew where this was going, oh, no doubt about it. He held his hands up in protest.
“Aw, come on, guys, you know that story isn’t—”
Then slowly but surely, one by one, everyone chanted his name, urging him towards that eerie, square hole. He sighed and went over to it. Through the grate, he could barely see sunlight reflecting off the… well, it was some kind of liquid. Who knew what else was down there? Seven-foot rats? Monsters? Clowns? Seven-foot monster rat clowns? …Bodies?
Oh, no. Please no. Don’t let it be that. That was just a story, after all. And even if it wasn’t, so what? He and the other teens had encountered ghosts before, hadn’t they?
Something flashed by in the dark. Despite his instincts not to get any closer, he stood above the grate and kneeled down to get a better look.
Just then the grate, rusted by age, gave in, and Thompson found himself falling a long way down, screaming into the void. His horrified friends ran over to the hole right before they heard the bang, and their panicked, broken sentences piled over one another:
“Oh my god!”
“Holy cow!”
“Did he just—?!?!”
“Status update: Thompson just died today.”
And from down there, they heard Thompson, as if he didn’t just fall forty feet down a hole, exclaim in an excited tone:
“Oh! Hi, Larry King!”
“Status update: Never mind.”