Phantom Falls

Chapter 19

Skulker soared over the junkyard. His radar indicated that one of the humans he needed was somewhere inside. He pulled up the case files on this particular human. According to his information, the human should be in the ramshackle pile of metal below him. Skulker landed next to the pile of junk, scanning carefully for his prey.

"YE-HAW!" A ragged old man jumped out from behind the twisted heaps of trash, flying into Skulker's face.

"What the-?!" Skulker yelled, as the man climbed onto his head.

"Well, lookee here!" The man called. His long white beard dangled into Skulker's eyes, obscuring his vision. "Seems I've got myself a brand-new robot!" He spat off to the side, somehow getting it to land in a spittoon over ten feet away.

"What? Get off me, human!" Skulker said, stumbling around and trying to get the crazy old man off his head.

"Wh-hee-hee-hee! Hoo-yeah!" The man yelled as he rode Skulker like a bucking bronco.

"Arrgh!" Skulker said as he ripped the man off his head. The man's eyes stared in opposite directions as he continued to writhe in Skulker's grip, but not as if he were trying to break free. It was more like he were doing some sort of jig.

"Apparently I need you, stange human," Skulker said in resigned confusion. He pulled out a small cube from a compartment of his suit and it sucked the old man inside.

That left only three more targets. Three particularly difficult targets. The twins were going to be a problem if they were still hanging around that ghost child, but Skulker thought if he could get the jump on him he might be able to capture them without too much trouble. The third, however, was a human about whom he had no information whatsoever. He couldn't get a reading for him in any location in Gravity Falls, even though he should be registering on Skulker's instruments the way the others had. It was as if he weren't in Gravity Falls at all. Perhaps not even in this reality.