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Mabel kicked and punched and wriggled and bit and did everything she could to get free. “You better let me and my brother go right now, Mr. Gleeful” – the man holding her jumped a bit. Ha! Did he think she wouldn’t recognize him just because he was wearing a stupid hood? – “or else my grunkles are going to beat you up when I tell ‘em about this.”
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She and Dipper were supposed to be having a fun day at the stuffy old history museum with Grunkle Ford and Fiddleford while the two of them tried to investigate what happened to make Fiddleford lose all his memories. They knew it had something to do with the memory-erasing gun that Fiddleford had built way before, but they wanted to figure what exactly went down. Except it turned out that Grunkle Ford and Fiddleford’s way of investigating was super boring and involved a lot of smart people talk, so Mabel convinced Dipper to come with her so they could do their own investigating. Which had been a total success – Mystery Twins rule! Dipper had found the weird hole in the wall with a tube running down it and Mabel came up with the awesome idea to slide down it like they were firemen. Then at the bottom there was these huge pair of doors with a big ol’ eye on them. That’s probably when they should have gone to get Grunkle Ford and Fiddleford, but they had been too excited, so they had opened the door and behind it was a whole room full of little tube things and as they were standing there, one of the little tube things came shooting down the main tube thing they had slid down and landed on the pile with the rest. And when they looked at it, it had a little label that said “TYLER C. MEMORIES.” After that everything started happening really fast and next thing Mabel knew, Mr. Gleeful was holding her while Dipper was being strapped down to a chair by some more of the creepy robe guys who were going to erase his memory. And Mabel had to get free so she could save her brother.
“Don’t you worry about us none, sugar,” Mr. Gleeful said. Mabel snarled at him; he wasn’t allowed to call her that any more. “In a few minutes you won’t remember anything to tell your great uncles at all.”
Mabel screamed as loud as she could. She had to get to her brother and save him before they erased his memories and tried to break his mind like they broke Fiddleford’s. “Dipper!”
“Mabel!” Dipper yelled back, and Mabel had to get away and save him, she had to.
Then they heard the best sound in the whole wide world. “Put the memory gun down and step away from my niece and nephew this instant.” Grunkle Ford looked and sounded scarier than Mabel had ever seen or heard ever before with his space gun pressed against the leader of the creepy robe guys’s back and his voice hard and cold like ice, and Mabel thought she was going to cry because it was okay now, they were safe because Grunkle Ford was going to protect them.
Suddenly Mr. Gleeful fell to the ground with a pained moan, but Mabel didn’t care about him – she hated him now. All Mabel cared about was she was free, and she ran over to Dipper and started tugging at the straps holding his arms down. Then she thought she was going to cry again, because the straps wouldn’t come off, but then Fiddleford came up behind her and guided her hands to the clasp, which she pulled open while Fiddleford went around and did the other side.
As soon as Dipper was free, Mabel clambered up into the chair with him, hugged him, and said his name over and over again – “Dipper-Dipper-Dipper-Dipper” – so he wouldn’t ever forget who he was, and Dipper held her back just as tight. It was okay now; they were safe. Grunkle Ford was telling all the creepy robe guys off in his scary voice and breaking their memory gun under his foot, and Fiddleford was standing next to Dipper and Mabel with a shovel in his hands, ready to knock any of the creepy robe guys that might try to sneak away from Grunkle Ford.
After a few minutes the creepy robe guys left – ran off scared, more like – and Grunkle Ford walked over to Mabel and Dipper. “Sweetheart?” he said, putting a hand on Mabel’s back. Mabel turned around and launched herself at him, knocking him flat on his butt. Then Dipper got down from the chair and climbed into Grunkle Ford’s lap too, and they both hugged him as tight as they could. That’s when Mabel really and actually started to cry.
Grunkle Ford stroked her hair and down her back and she thought he was doing the same thing for Dipper too, who wasn’t crying exactly, but he was making weird sad hiccup-y sounds. Mabel buried her face in Grunkle Ford’s sweater and felt the rumbling of his chest as he hummed reassuringly at them and occasionally said things like “It’s okay,” and “You’re safe now,” and “I won’t ever let them hurt you.”
It took a little while, but finally Mabel stopped crying, and Dipper looked calmer too. “I think it’s time we go home,” Grunkle Ford said.
“No! We can’t leave yet,” Dipper protested.
“Fiddleford,” Mabel said, reaching out for him.
Fiddleford took her hand and came a couple of steps closer. “What is it, little sweet tea?”
“We got something for you,” she told him. Mabel reached into the super-secret pocket inside her sweater – for candy and stickers and glitter and anything else she might need at any moment – and pulled out the little tube she’d put in there. She handed it to Fiddleford and explained, “Dipper found that, but when he picked it up it set off all these alarms, so I hid it inside my sweater to keep it safe. And then those creepy robe guys came and said we’d seen too much and that we had to tell them where we hid the memory tube or else they’d erase all our memories.”
“Wait a second,” Dipper said. “If they had erased our memories like they wanted to, then how were we supposed to tell them where we hid the memory tube?”
“Hey yeah,” Mabel agreed, and then she giggled, just a little bit. “That was pretty stupid of them, huh?”
“You kids got this for me?” Fiddleford said, his voice all soft and amazed.
“Well, yeah,” said Dipper. “You’re our friend.”
“Our friend who lives in the same house as us, so basically you’re family,” Mabel added. And not the bad kind of family, like Aunt Karen who only called them once a year on the Sunday closest to their birthday. Fiddleford was the good kind of family, who helped make cool inventions for Grunkle Stan to use at the Mystery Shack, and who listened to all of Dipper’s smart person talk, and who said Mabel was nicer than an ice cold glass of Southern sweet tea, and made Grunkle Ford really happy, and a little sad too, but the good kind of sad that meant you cared about someone.
“What is it?” Grunkle Ford asked, and his voice was all soft too. Fiddleford turned the tube around so Grunkle Ford could read the label, “McGUCKET MEMORIES.” Grunkle Ford opened his mouth and closed it a few times, but he sometimes wasn’t that good with words to express his emotions, so he ended up just hugging Dipper and Mabel tight, tight, tight. And that was fine; they understood what he meant.
“There’s a TV in the other room with all the memory tubes that you can use to watch them on,” Dipper told them. “So we can’t leave yet.” Mabel nodded, even if she really did want to leave this spooky place and go home. They had to let Fiddleford watch his memories first.
“Y’know, I reckon we ought t’be able to reconfiger this here doo-dad to work so we can play it on the TV at home,” Fiddleford said.
“I’m sure we can,” Grunkle Ford agreed. Then he stood up, picking up both Dipper and Mabel like it was nothing, ‘cause Grunkle Ford was really strong and he could have beat up all those creepy robe guys if he had wanted to, he just hadn’t because it was scarier that way. “Come on, let’s get you two home.”
Once they pulled up in front of their house, they went straight into the gift shop, so Grunkle Ford and Fiddleford could go down to the basement and work on fixing up the memory tube. Plus Grunkle Stan was in the gift shop scamming tourists, and as soon as Mabel saw him she dropped Grunkle Ford’s hand and ran over to Grunkle Stan and hugged him tight. Because even though Mabel loved Grunkle Ford just as much as she loved Grunkle Stan, she had loved Grunkle Stan for a lot longer than she had loved Grunkle Ford, so it was easier for her brain to remember she was safe when Grunkle Stan was there.
“Hey there sweetie, something the matter?” Grunkle Stan asked. He put his hands on Mabel’s shoulders and tried to push her away just a little bit so he could look at her, but Mabel held on tight.
“We had a bit of a run-in today at the museum,” Grunkle Ford said, then he quickly explained what happened.
After Grunkle Ford was done explaining, Grunkle Stan bent down and picked Mabel up. She wrapped her arms tight around his neck and placed her head on his shoulder. “Okay, the Mystery Shack closes in ten minutes so everyone buy your junk and get out,” Grunkle Stan demanded. “Soos, you’re in charge of wrapping things up in here. Dipper, you come with me and your sister so the two Fords here can go work on their memory thing.”
Dipper let go of Grunkle Ford’s hand to take the one Grunkle Stan was offering, and then they all went together into the TV room. Grunkle Stan sat down on his chair with Mabel in his lap, and Dipper came up and joined them. Grunkle Stan grumbled about how they were getting too big to fit both of them up here like this, but Grunkle Stan was always grumbling about something – he had to keep his street cred as a grumpy old man – and he didn’t really mean it. He even let them put on the cartoon they liked that he said was too super-real for him, whatever that meant. Half an episode later, Soos came in and sat on the floor right in front of Grunkle Stan’s chair and started watching it with them. That’s when Mabel finally felt like everything was getting back to normal again.
An episode and a half of that show, plus two episodes of a different cartoon that Mabel was pretty sure Grunkle Stan liked even better than they did, later, Grunkle Ford and Fiddleford came in with one of those old school VCR tapes in Grunkle Ford’s hand. “I think we’ve got it figured out; do you all mind if we borrow the TV?” Grunkle Ford asked.
“Next episode is a rerun anyway,” Grunkle Stan said. “Soos, fix the TV up so it’s running off the VCR, would ya?”
“Sure thing,” Soos said, going over to the TV and grabbing the tape from Grunkle Ford on the way. “You can have my seat, Mr. Fiddleford, dude. Best spot in the house.”
Fiddleford sat down in front of Grunkle Stan’s chair where Soos had been, except for he sat just a little bit further away. Then Grunkle Ford sat down on the floor on Fiddleford’s one side, and after Soos was done with the TV, he sat down on the other.
After the first couple of memories, it was clear to Mabel that this video was going to be super sad. Sadness like this called for the Power of Mabel. She climbed down off of Grunkle Stan’s lap and went to go sit in Fiddleford’s lap instead. Grunkle Ford had already put his hand on Fiddleford’s shoulder on one side, so Mabel reached out to hold Soos’s hand and pull him closer until he was pressed up right against Fiddleford’s other side. Then Mabel snuggled back into Fiddleford as hard as she could, until he was scooched all the way back into Grunkle Stan’s legs. Once Fiddleford was closer, Dipper, the Power of Mabel’s number one assistant, rested both his feet on Fiddleford’s other shoulder, so that Mabel could feel his sock-covered big toes touching against the back of her head. And, even though the video was really sad, Mabel gave a happy sigh and smiled.
(She didn’t look to check, but she was pretty sure Fiddleford did too.)