Gravitational Phantoms: After the Storm

Chapter Five: Spooky Scary Skeletons

"It's almost Halloween!" Mabel sang as she spun around the kitchen in a whirlwind of yellow and blue yarn.

Dipper chuckled as he watched her. "Yeah, but there's still a few more weeks to go. You do know that, right?"

"So? We still need costumes, and candy pillowcases, and pictures of whatever Candy and Grenda are wearing this year," Mabel giggled.

Her brother sighed and rolled his eyes. Dipper took a sip of his coffee-he had developed somewhat of a taste for it after he turned thirteen. Mabel still hated it, and it was probably for the best anyway. She was hyper enough normally and the last thing that they needed was to heighten that fact with caffeine.

"I thought that you already had costumes picked out for us?"

"Well," Mabel said with a shrug. "I did. But then I realized that there were so many other possibilities that we could use, so I started to think about those ones instead. So I ended up not actually making the costumes."

"Of course you didn't," Dipper muttered affectionately. Louder, he added, "So what did you decide on after all?"

"You'll just have to wait and see," Mabel smirked.

Dipper huffed wryly. "I can't wait."

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Mabel beamed as she carried the homemade outfits out of her closet. The original design had been gotten off of the internet, but the modifications were all her own.

They just needed a few more touches...

"Mom, I'm heading to the store!" She called, bouncing out of the house. The fabric (as well as craft, clothing, etcetera), store was right near their home, so not much walking was needed.

When she arrived, she was greeted by a fake skeleton in the face. But instead of screaming in terror, Mabel let out a battle cry.

"HIII-YAH!" The teenager kicked the skeleton's face in before immediately apologizing to the person holding it. "Oh my gosh, Jeremy! I'm so sorry! Are you okay? See, this is why you don't scare people when they just want to get crafts for their costumes."

Jeremy, a store employee who knew Mabel reasonably well, winced and gingerly touched his slightly bloody nose.

"Yeah," he said thickly. "I fink Iw'll bwe okway in a bwit."

"Oh, good. You're sure? Because if you are, can you tell me where the new stuff is?"

After Jeremy waved her in the direction of their newest stock, Mabel left him to clean up his blood from the floor.

The brunette girl skipped down the isles, sticking her head briefly down each one. Once or twice, she stopped to get stuff like yarn or more sticks for her hot glue gun (no, not sticks. Dipper was always saying that they weren't sticks, even if they looked like them. They were just not-melty glue).

That is, until she saw something that made her stop in her tracks.

Mabel was frozen. Was that... What she thought it was?

Carefully backing up so that she could confirm with her mind what her eyes were telling her, Mabel stared at it.

She picked up the object and turned it over in her hands almost reverently. It even felt the same, if a bit less well-worn.

In an instant, Mabel was paying and out the door. She knew that she should have been sprinting home to show Dipper, but something told her not to. Maybe it was the faint flickering in the corner of her eye, but Mabel felt as if she were being watched. But not in a particularly bad way. Just... A strange one.

Like whatever (or whoever) was watching her wasn't evil.

So Mabel made her special modifications and fixed up the costumes. She showed her brother her findings, and pretended that there weren't a few traitorous tears leaking from her eyes and trickling down her face.

And she acted like she couldn't see her brothers, too.

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Danny sighed as he ignored the doorbell for the eight millionth time.

He didn't even know why Wendy had bothered getting candy. They were just going to eat it all anyways (Ford could pretend all that he wanted-Danny knew that he and Wendy weren't the only reasons that it was disappearing so fast, especially the chocolate).

Really, the fact that their light was on was no reason to keep knocking. Couldn't the stupid kids accept that one of the reasons that they were even out in the middle of nowhere in the first place was because they didn't want to be disturbed?

As the bell chimed again, Danny finally stood up and turned invisible. He swooped over the porch and landed behind the two who kept knocking, dropping his invisibility and crossing his arms.

"Who are you?"

They turned, and Danny realized that they couldn't have been much older than ten or eleven. One of them huffed.

"We just want some revenge. It's none of your business, anyways."

Danny raised an eyebrow. "It is when I live here."

The shorter boy, who was dressed as a skeleton, scoffed. "Yeah, right. The only one who lives here is that old guy. He scared us on Summerween; now it's payback time."

Danny blinked slowly. Summerween? What the heck is that supposed to be? Halloween in the summertime?

"Well, you're mistaken." Danny took a step forward. He wasn't going to be afraid of these boys until they actually touched him. "I do live here, and if you try anything I'll skin you alive."

The Halfa tried to sound confident and threatening, the same way that Wendy did. It must have worked, because the two paled, looked at each other, and then ran off into the trees. Danny hoped that they knew about the monsters.

"Boo!" Someone jumped from the shadows behind him.

Danny yelped and spun around. "Wendy! Don't do that!"

She grinned at him. "I just wanted to stop by. Robbie and Tambry are being all lovie-dovie, Lee and Nate are gross as usual, and I don't even wanna know what Thompson's doing. Plus-" she pulled something up on her phone. "The twins sent me this great picture of their costumes."

The redhead pulled it up for Danny to see.

Dipper and Mabel were dressed up as Mulder and Scully from the X-Files, but they looked as if they had been bitten by zombies. Remembering the time that Mabel told him about Dipper summoning a bunch of reanimated corpses, he wouldn't find it to unbelievable.

And if Danny thought that anything was odd about Scully wearing a red fez with a peculiar golden shape on it, he didn't say a word.