Admittedly, the Central Oregon Toxic Waste and Radiation Museum had been too on the nose to pan out for Stan. His primitive sensor couldn't pick up anything more radioactive than the exhibit of 1960s cosmetics. Though he did enjoy the goop monster animatronic that popped up as he passed a hazard waste barrel. Well, if he was being honest, he'd laughed only after his heart rate had moved out of the Danger Zone.

He strode past the Radium Theatre and the Microwave Cafeteria, pausing a moment to admire the faintly glowing plastic chairs and tables, before picking up the pace and heading toward the visitor entrance.

The place was a dump. There was no security system at all, unless there were cameras installed in the hundreds of eyes from the Nuclear Testing Manikin Replica City. Stan had stood awkwardly in a model living room, blinking at the perfect 1950s family a moment before pantsing the father. He'd snagged the mustached manikin's pipe and passed it off to one of his sons. Finally, he'd tossed the mother's wig on the baby backwards, transforming it into an ugly furry beast and snapped one of the antenna on the television set, for good measure.

"Good work, Stan," he'd complimented himself, clapping his hands together.

Stan kicked at the message he'd sprayed across the black and white tiles in the lobby. The dot in an exclamation point blotted.

The Central Oregon Toxic Waste & Radiation Museum Sucks! BOO!

"Whatever!" his voice echoed up the salt and pepper flecked staircase and likely carried all the way to the unfeeling plastic parents and bounced inside the son's empty head.

He point-snapped at Marie Curie on the way out, mouthing "Call me" while walking backwards toward the door. A trail of electric green splotches followed his movements.

He tripped over the pamphlet kiosk, careening backwards and sending a wave of booklets crashing against the dirty red carpet.

"Warms my heart to see this, really," Stan laughed, picking up a Mystery Shack pamphlet that had fallen next to him and stuffing it in his breast pocket. "Ole Stan Pines making it in this ugly world."

Stan's back protested as he tried to get up. He laid his head on the pile of pamphlets and wiggled around, searching for purchase but finding none. If anyone had been there, they would have sworn he was making snow angels in the mountain of glossy print pages.

"Anybody wanna help an old man up? No? Could've guessed as much!"

"Creativity is not important to art," Mrs. Beleprise intoned, arching her arm dramatically as she laid a sheet of paper on each student's desk, "Inspiration comes and goes. Planning and work is important. Everything is in the planning, the effort, and the unplanned mistake. Look at the handouts, class. Each tiny thumbnail drawing is a plan. The free sketch, the design, the placement on canvas, the lineart, it all culminates in one beautiful painting that appears effortless to the world.

"With all this planning, you may think 'Where does The Mistake-' that's in capitals, class, as it is a living thing- a mistake breathes… wait, where did I go? You may think 'Where does The Mistake come in?'

"In your other classes, I'm sure you've learned of inventors and explorers have stumbled upon things without meaning to. Can any of you think of one? Yes, Amira."

"The Cheese Guy. He left milk out until it wasn't milk. And then ate it! Which is crazy, but it ended up being good so-"

"Great answer, I'll take it. Cheese was a mistake! Isn't that great?

"So, what is an art mistake? It's when maybe your hand slips and you make a line in a way you wouldn't've done on purpose. When you put a drawing in the copier and it distorts in an interesting way. When you put that sculpture in the kiln and it explodes, which forces you to work differently the next time.

"First attempts are beautiful and today, we are going to make them, class. We are going to make mistakes."

"Yes, Jesús?"

"It's Soos, Mrs. Beleprise. Uh, please."

"I'm sorry, Soos. Now, what did you want to ask?"

"So is planning or mistakes more important? I'm… kinda, like, confused."

"Both, Soos. I'm just emphasizing what we do wrong today because we often forget its part in creativity. That there is no need for constant perfection."

"Is this true for… non-art things? Too?"

"Yes, I would say so. Very important."

"Okay." He paused to absorb this, then remembered himself and added, "And we won't get a bad grade if it goes bad?"

"No, not today. Not in this class."

"Thank you, Mrs. Beleprise."

"You're welcome, Soos."

They had certainly planned, Soos thought to himself. Mistakes had seemed bad when they were talking about how Halloween night would work.

Well, Raoul and Amira had planned for him. Raoul had gone to the library and read, reread, and later hand-copied relevant passages from How to Scout for Boys: An Unnecessarily Gendered Guide to Taming the Untamable Forces of Nature and the Occult for each of them.

Soos thumbed through the pages in front of him, trying not to smudge Raoul's writing or hand drawn diagrams.

Scattered among the hand copied charts and figures, were print outs from Amira's conquest of the World Wide Web. The black text blended in with the haunted house wallpaper background in places. Soos imagined that if he had been on the Internet, the pair of aliens in the corner would be dancing and the eyeball in the center of the page would blink at him.

He spread the pages out around him, surprised to come across a handout from art class. He frowned a moment, mulling over Mrs. Beleprise's words. Raoul and Amira were better at planning, but he figured he should try harder to help them.

Soos reached for his journal and scrawled at the top of a fresh page:

Fix-It Wizard Wisdom #4: A good fix-it guy's gotta be creative and plan AND mess up a little (but in a cool way).

"Huh," Snake Tattoo Guy grunted, squinting through the "STNLYMBL" window.

"Mmmm?" He cupped his hands around his eyes and pressed against the cool glass.

Green splotches peppered the gas petal and mat.

"Well, that's no surprise," he mumbled to himself, having noticed the immaculate break.

"Hmmm," he said, opening his cookbook and making a note in the margin of a recipe for apple cake with lemon and cardamom.

"Hey, you! Out there! I don't pay ya to sit around! Get in!" Stan shouted.

Snake Tattoo Guy took a deep breath. In nose, out mouth. He put his book away and fast walked towards the Shack, tote bag smacking his leg with each step.

"Ugh. What were you even doing?!" Stan grumbled, slamming the screen door behind him.

"Just thinkin', sir."

The golf cart was turned on its side, mechanical belly exposed to Soos. He reached out to give it a pat.

"Wait fer it," Old Man McGucket cautioned, slapping Soos' hand away.

"For what?"

"It." Old Man McGucket pressed an ear into the scrap metal and closed his eyes. "Righ' there."

Soos, swaying under the weight of his tool kit, waddled forward to get a closer look.

"Out, out, you vermin!" Mr. Pines bellowed, running with surprising speed down the slight incline, broom in hand.

"Wait, Mr. Pines, sir," Soos placated, dropping the tool kit mere centimeters from his toes, "he was only trying to-"

"I ain't hearin' it, kid," Stan huffed, shaking the broom in the direction of the cart. Huge spirals of dirt flew off the broom like spit, a tornado of dust bunny remains flying into Old Man McGucket's unblinking eyes.

After a moment's pause, Soos' only hope for Fix-It success scuttled away on all fours, yelping as he made a mad dash for the woods.

"Stay off my property. I'm telling you- I have ten guns!"

"But Mr. Pines-"

"I told you, I ain't hearing it. He's bad for business. We want folks to have fun here, loosen up, waste cash on the Mystery Wheel. When people see a crazy old guy, it's not fun anymore. They think, 'hey, I could end up like that guy.' And then all our spook'ems and jokes are lost because they can't stop thinking about the real monsters out there."

"Like the Trickster?" Soos risked, frowning at the now distant blur that had been about to explain the secrets of making screaming piles of metal purr.

"Nah, kiddo," Stan gave a short, barking laugh, "That stuff's fake. Y'know, the real scary stuff: death, old age, and… wait, am I supposed to be talkin' to a kid 'bout this stuff?"

"Probably not, Mr. Pines," Soos shrugged.

"Just… uh, try not to be emotionally scarred…" Mr. Pines walked backwards through the gift shop door, stumbling. He held the doorknob in a death grip in one hand as he point-snapped at his young employee with the other."Forgeeeet."

"Alright, Mr. Pines." He popped open his tool kit and lined up its content, one cold, weird thing at a time. He laid his walkie talkie slash AM FM radio, a screwdriver, and a roll of tiger striped duct tape on the leaf litter, turning narrowed eyes to each in turn. In the end, he reached for the tape, settling for the only thing he knew worked at this point.

"And don't hang around that old coot anymore." Mr. Pines shouted as he slammed the screen door.

"You're the only old coot for me," Soos said under his breath. He laughed at his own joke, wishing he had been brave enough to have shouted it back to Mr. Pines or have stood up for Old Man McGucket.

"Guess this is my big break to make mistakes," Soos sighed.

It wasn't like Soos didn't see Old Man McGucket anymore. He was still there. In fact, he was everywhere.

He stood behind them at the grocery store Monday morning. As he waited for Abuela to pack up their cart, Soos watched him fumble with his food stamps, pulling them from inside his hat like a magician.

"Cash don't mean much more 'an this slip of paper in my hands right here," he said, or rather shouted towards the cashier. "Invest in a lil gold, if'in you can. Now, Sally Sawscraps says you can just dig righ' in the ground anywhere in this ol' town. Highwaymen gold is all over the backroads here."

Soos was familiar with local chatterbox and gossip Sally Sawscraps the woodpecker but he didn't think the cashier was from the way her mouth crinkled.

"No staring," Abuela waved Soos away.

When she wasn't looking, he took one last look over his shoulder as Mcgucket grabbed his grocery bag.

There were only two items in it: an industrial sized bag of walnuts and a small tub of egg potato salad.

Soos hugged a plastic bag covered cereal box closer to him as Abuela hustled him out of the store.

Stan was trying to ignore the fact that Alba Ramirez was mooching off prime tourist space for approximately twenty-five minutes too long.

"You- over there, Snake Guy!" Stan barked out before looking back down at his copy of Mr. Parenting's Guide. "Tell her she can get the all-day parking pass or hit the road!"

He fumbled with a pack of gummy chairs a moment before dumping the whole thing in his mouth without taking his eyes off the page.

Chapter 3: Responsible Responsibility Or As An Adult Everything is Your Fault

YES, YOU READ THAT RIGHT. You are a grown up person desperate to blame your mistakes on dumb babies. But guess what: you're responsible for your own actions and for explaining them and basically the entire world to children.

Never leave a kid thinking an action unrelated to them is their fault. Remember being a kid and thinking that dead puppy/horrendous accident/divorce was your fault? It wasn't and you didn't deserve that burden.

So don't pass it on.

"Hmmm." Stan pressed his palm into a spiky patch of stubble, drummed one set of fingers across the page. "Mmmm…"

The bell over the door tinkle-screamed as Alba Ramirez burst into the gift shop, Snake Tattoo Guy followed behind, his interlocked pleading hands useless.

"You did… that thing, right?" Alba asked when she reached the counter.

"What?" Stan grunted.

Alba pointed with her head out the side window where Soos was belly flopping into a pile of leaves (on the clock! He ought to get up and tell him to stop!).

"Oh, uh, yeah. That's… over with."

"Good." She paused a moment before continuing, "I like Jessica Felix, too."

"Er, wha-? Oh, oh yeah, gr-great writer," Stan babbled, clearing his throat and instinctively pulling the book to his chest. He ran a thumb along the dustjacket he'd used to disguise Mr. Parenting's Guide. "She really… captures crime… perfectly."

"Yes, I think so too."

"What are you… smiling at me or somethin'?" Stan laughed uneasily.

"I can do that," she replied with a mischievous eyebrow raise. "I hear you are doing a Halloween party. I used to do event planning; let me help."

"Uh, seriously?" Stan wasn't trying to cover his gaping mouth.

"I hate to disappoint Soos."

"Oh. Sure. Let's, uh, let's have a party."

"Happy Halloween!" Amira yelled, racing from the school's back door towards them at speeds Soos had only ever achieved in Loony Limo, swinging a plastic pumpkin in her hands. It jingled, it scraped, but it didn't candy-wrapper-crinkle.

"Dude, that's not candy," Soos quipped as he leaned over to see the quarters, dimes, and dollar bills shifting around the bottom.

"Definitely not," Raoul agreed with a laugh, removing an origami folded five dollar bill from his wallet, which was shaped like a roaring campfire.

"Is this a bird?" Amira giggled, snagging it from his hands and admiring it for a moment before dropping it in with the rest. "Did you do that?"

"Nah," Raoul sighed, "Soos did. I was born with no talents…"

"Whoa, Soos, that's seriously cool. And don't be a wet blanket, Raoul; you're pretty cool, I guess." She poked the contents of the pumpkin with one finger and began to count aloud.

"Hey! I'm allowed to say I stink, but YOU-"

"Five, six, seven… what was that?" Amira tilted her head to one side and looked profoundly confused.

"Wait, are you guys still mad at each other?" Soos asked his shoes. He kneaded the plastic bag in his hands and listened for an answer in the jingling of every type of coin the U.S. government had minted since 1982, according to his abuelita.

"It's kind of a joke now," Raoul replied, before turning to Amira with a weak "Right?"

"Yeah, it's funny hate now," Amira shifted the pumpkin into both hands. "Like on TV."

"Oh, good," Soos breathed and dropped his Zippo Bag into the pumpkin. Combined, they had a great bounty and Soos liked to imagine them as a big giant robot guy that ran on friendship and also fists.

They could probably do anything.

"And now a treat! No tricks, seriously!" Amira pulled three boxes from her backpack and shouted at the top of her lungs "LUNCH-A-MALS!"

"Duuuude!"

"My mom got the pizza kind for all of us, because it's the best." She passed out the boxes and plopped down on the grass. The two boys followed suit.

Soos scooted side to side as he settled down, the crunching leaves sounding like a pile of candy wrappers underneath him.

"You guys like this, right?" Amira asked, pausing to let them get out their tiny plastic trays and stab their Juicy Pouches.

"Sure do!" Soos exclaimed as Raoul nodded vigorously, his entire fun sized Crinkle bar already in his mouth.

"Well, then," Amira announced, tapping a spiked word bubble on her unopened package and trying not to laugh, "it really is '100% kid approved!'"

"You're the worst," Raoul groaned, gross chewed candy bits falling onto the leaves under him.

Soos laughed and started spreading sauce on his pizza cracker.

"They've got free masks!" Raoul exclaimed, trying to push his gross indignity out of their memories. He took his out and showed it off.

"A rat mask for Rat Tail Boy!" Amira grinned, pulling out her own mask.

"And a bat mask for a batty girl!" Raoul stuck out his tongue.

"I got a cat!" Soos smiled and slipped the cardboard over his head and snapped the elastic band over his ears.

"Nice!" A rat boy murmured approvingly and a bat girl reached out for a high five.

"Work with me here," Stan cajoled as he tugged a zipper up his back. It stuck and refused to budge a few inches from the back of his neck. "Well, it was cheap."

He snatched up his horned headband and turned to face the mirror. He placed it carefully on his head and grinned at his reflection.

"Stan Pines, you are devilishly handsome." He cackled madly at his own joke before composing himself then bursting into giggles again. "I kill me."

"Face paint or no?" he asked his reflection, turning his head from side to side.

He was interrupted by a series of furious knocks on the door.

"Whaddya want? I'm not giving any of you moochers candy!" Stan's eyes rolled back into his head as the knocking continued, for some reason. "Okay, okay, but you aren't getting any a' the good stuff."

He dashed down the hall, grabbing a bowl filled with chocolate eyeballs from a bureau by the door.

"Alright, alright!" he shouted tossing a handful out the door. "Is this what you wanted, you monsters?!"

"Good evening, Mr. Pines." Alba blinked sweetly at him. She flinched as the eyeballs hit her but recovered with surprising speed. She picked a few off the porch and put them in the pocket of her white dress, her glittery pipe cleaner halo and chicken feather wings bouncing as she moved.

"Wait, did we plan this?" Stan asked as she steadied herself, gesturing between their costumes. "I don't remember planning this.

"I don't… think so," she replied, drinking in his unflattering red bodysuit and horns.

"Sweet Moses," Stan breathed between fits of laughter. "What the hell?"

Alba joined him, using the doorframe to support herself.

"You've gotta be kidding me."

A figure in billowing robes paced the slab of concrete in front of the Dusk-2-Dawn. Occasionally, her stiff, awkward movements would cause the automatic door to drift open with its characteristic squeegee-scraping sounds.

Soos bolted from the truck and towards Amira, but not before lifting up the hood of his homemade dinosaur suit. Googly eyes the size of his fists rattled as he trotted up to the front door.

His abuela had only just finished piecing it together from an old fleece blanket they'd got at the thrift store. The fabric was rough around the elbows, but soft around his stomach and legs. She had explained that it would see a long life as both a costume and a pair of pajamas, and Soos knew that bed time would change forever following this fateful Halloween.

"Are you ready?" Amira stopped pacing when he approached. She shifted the large box in her arms and looked him over. "Can it fit in your bag?"

"I think so," Soos answered, holding up his dinosaur pillowcase/candy bag. It fit nicely and luckily, there would still be room for candy.

"Now, we wait. Again," Amira sighed, leaning back against the window, the "OPEN" sign lending her an eerie green aura.

"Cool costume." Soos noticed the shirt collar and red tie poking out of her robes.

"Thanks, you too."

"Here- I'm here!" Raoul called between breaths as he jogged up to the two of them. Soos was sure he'd run a marathon even though he knew it wasn't true. His hair was slicked back, his braided rat tail thrown over his shoulder. He was Super Hero Man, with a red-white-and-blue suit, a billowing cape on his back, a walkie talkie in his utility belt, and his polyester jacket tied around his waist.

"So, trick or treat first, right?" Amira asked.

"Sure thing, Citizen," Raoul puffed heroically.

"ROAAAAR!" agreed Soos.

They dashed from house to house, ringing doorbells, picking up two candies from bowls labelled "TAKE ONE PLEASE," and filling up, pumpkins, beach bags, pillow cases.

Soos would have forgotten the grim business they would be up to later if not for the pitter-patter of candy bouncing off the Ouiji board in his bag, sounding something like an oncoming storm the clear night sky had not predicted.

"We should start with the thing soon," Raoul pointed out as they'd reached the end of Nathaniel Ave, the Halloween capital of Gravity Falls. After those houses, with their huge, humming inflatable decorations and full-size candy bars, there was no better you could do. Well, Hoo-Ha's Family Haunt-a-palooza, but that was always packed and you had to pay to get it in. Trick or Treating was as free as it had always been.

"We could go to the dump," Amira suggested. "It's just up ahead!"

"But…" Soos piped up from behind them, "Mr. McGucket lives there and Mr. Pines says I can't-"

"What is he, your dad?" Amira chided, reaching into the dinosaur pillowcase.

"Don't be like that," Raoul started, swatting her hand away.

"Look," she sighed, "I know you really like Mr. Pines, Soos, but he's your boss not the boss of you."

"You've actually got a point there," Raoul conceded, saving the swift shin kick he had considered for another time.

Soos looked at his friends, then up above them. There were no telephone wires blocking the view and in the distance, trees went on forever.

The sky was empty.

"Yeah, you're right. Let's go."

"There," Alba announced, pride clear in her voice, as she placed the last punch cup. She clapped nonexistent dust off her fingers and stood back, placing her hands on her hips.

Together, the twenty some odd cups formed an admittedly crude but clear pumpkin shape.

It was good enough for a Stanford Pines party.

The man, or more appropriately, the devil, himself was on the other side of the room, busying himself with tacking up a game of pin the tail on the donkey. He ripped the hat from a crummy old witch decoration and tore off a length of tape with his teeth. The hat was placed over the donkey's head.

Alba rolled her eyes as she rearranged the chips to look neater. They slouched when she took her hands away. She gave up on them, like she'd given up on True Crime television, Soos' father, and hearing good things on the news.

"The streamers next?" she called, picking up a messy bundle of used streamers at the end of the table.

"You do that," he shouted back. "Had a fall this morning; these old legs couldn't take it."

He had been grumbling about the streamers since she'd found them in the box of decorations on the kitchen table. She'd gotten the ladder from a shed behind the Shack herself.

"Oh, and, uh, my cashier'll be in, like, twenty minutes, to lend a hand. We can, er, take it easy then." Stan tossed her a yellow smile Alba suspected was supposed to be roguish and charming.

"You useless man," she mumbled as she climbed the ladder in the center of the room. She dragged herself up with one arm, the streamers tucked under the other.

A panic spread as her right foot caught on the hem of her dress and she tumbled down. There was no chorus of angels but if there was, they would have risen up from just beyond the party table to let out a string of tense, staccato notes, followed by smooth, legato ones as she slammed into the wood paneling below. The streamers fell out of her grasp and flew in all directions. They seemed to float as gravity forgave them in a way that it could not forgive a denser, more woman shaped object.

Stan Pines swore loudly as he stumped across the room. So loud. He hovered over her, his huge stupid face blocking out the rest of the world.

"No ambulance," she huffed out, "Can't afford it."

"Gross," Raoul gagged as he looked down at the rotted ring of literal rat tails hidden behind the Fix-a-ria sign.

"Yeah, I kinda forgot about 'em. Guess I'm glad I didn't bring them home," Soos mused from his place in the dirt. He was sitting cross-legged, board in between himself and Amira.

She pulled her cardboard bat mask from her pumpkin and slipped it on, countering Raoul's weird look with "I don't know- it's just cool."

Raoul settled down.

Soos blinked at the six hands hovering over the planchette, before opening with "Hello, spirit dude."

Everything was quiet, even though the streetlights buzzed, the wind rustled, and woodpeckers bashed their head into trees. It felt quiet.

"Are you like… here?"

Their hands drifted in unison to Yes.

"Were you a person, like, ever?"

Yes.

"Are you a boy or a girl?" Raoul asked.

"Dude, you can't just ask that!" Amira protested, as their hands moved to the letters M-A-N.

"How did you die?" Amira asked.

I pause F-E-L-L.

"Oh." Soos looked down at their hands all piled up, took a breath, and formed his question. "Are you good?"

No.

"Dude!" Raoul gasped, "Then what do you want with Soos? He's great!"

Soos was about to thank Raoul for the vote of confidence as the planchette picked out more letters.

N-O-T-H-I-N-G.

"Then why are you following him?!" Amira demanded, looking nearly threatening in her bat mask.

N-O-T pause D-O-I-N-G pause T-H-A-T.

"Then… what do you want?" Soos asked, feeling like his face was as green as his dinosaur suit.

"I want to fix this town for good!" The gruff voice belonged to the blue figure who was pulling himself out of the Sam's Fix-a-ria sign. He held a hammer in both hands that would have been comically large in any situation that didn't involve him rushing towards them.

The creature roared and smashed the hammer to the ground. Possums hissed as trash rained down. Old Man McGucket's tin house, three kids, and a Ouija Board hung several inches in the air for a handful of seconds.

"RUN!"

"Happy Halloween, everybody! You're listening to KWZL," Freddy shouted as Stan turned the key. "It's a beautiful Thursday night, clear skies, a little nip in the air. I can see the crescent moon from the lovely skylight here in Hoo-Ha's stage and dinning area and, Weasel, it fills me up more than a belly full of candy ever could. Almost as much as Hoo-Ha's family pizza-soda-fry for $5.95 deal. I feel like anything could happen tonight."

"I, for one, think a Friday would be much scarier. It's just that Thursdays-" the Weasel started to retort, but a cacophony of animal screeching interrupted him, "Ahhh, bats! You were right, Freddy, it is a scary night for our annual Haunt-a-palooza live sesh here at Hoo-Ha's with popular gothic rock band Marcescence! Emma Lee, how are you doing tonight?"

"Ugh." Stan snapped off the radio and started driving.

"It is very… messy back here," Alba said quietly from the back seat, after several minutes of silence.

Stan snorted, "Shoulda called a limo if you wanted nice."

"I'm in a lot of pain."

He had been driving quickly but carefully (for him) and slowed down noticeably at this comment.

"No," Alba rattled and there was a sound of a seatbelt clicking. Stan couldn't imagine how it was wrapped around her prone form. "Please go faster."

A man who was most often called Snake Tattoo Guy, second often called Agent 13, and only ever called a common five letter name by his mother on Thanksgiving and the one or two days of Hanukkah he could get off from his busy and decidedly undercover day, night, and forever job found the Mystery Shack empty.

He fiddled with a duct taped mummy of a walkie talkie he'd found in the yard. It had been half-buried in leaves and he'd nearly stepped on it.

"Mr. Pines?" Snake Tattoo Guy drifted from room to room, finding each as empty as the last. Floorboards groaned under him and he decided to set up camp in the gift shop before he got too spooked by the empty house to be of any use.

"I'm real good at this," he said to no one, lowering himself gingerly into the stool behind the register. The recently duct taped and spray painted third leg groaned but did not give.

Snake Tattoo Guy leafed through his recipes to pass the time. His cookbook was fifty years old, and yellowing, the margins of one memorable apple bundt cake recipe darkened with line after line of neatly scrawled Morse Code.

He fiddled with his hearing aid, which was functional but doubled as what Soos would likely call "cool spy gear." A burst of feedback blasted into his ear, reminding him of the cheap walkie talkie that rested beside him on the table. The volume lowered. A dull and somewhat annoying crackling persisted for a minute before…

.-.. / - / - / -.-

L-O-O-K.

Snake Tattoo Guy sighed and closed his book, removing an odd device from his Be Keen, Go Green tote bag. He cranked the dial back and forth, his ears attuned to its various noises.

The floor's squeaking had nothing on the buzzing in his earpiece, but there was somewhat of a struggle for dominance as he lowered himself to the throw rug. The fibers scraped his cheek as he pressed into the woven All Seeing Eye. His sensor blip-beeping like a cash register on Black Friday. Not the Mystery Shack cash register. One from somewhere normal. A mall with three fountains and a black and white checkered floor.

He held his breath and considered how he would get underneath the floor without Mr. Pines noticing and could he do it now and-

Another ringing shifted the course of his night. He scuttled up and yanked the phone from its cradle.

"Hello? Is Soos there? We've got a, uh, we've got a problem over here."

Soos was wedged between the driver's and back seats of a busted car, Raoul inches from his face and Amira tucked under the glovebox. The ghost had given them chase until they were out of breath and they hid, trying to suck in air as quietly as possible.

"I don't think it cares about us, right now," Amira whispered, "I don't know about you guys, but I can't hear it anymore..."

Soos jumped as a beeping broke the silence.

"My walkie talkie?!' Raoul exclaimed, "But no one else has… you don't think?"

"Answer! Answer!" Amira hissed.

"Hello," Raoul swallowed. "Um, oh. Soos. It's- it's for you."

Soos' heart was probably visible, pushing up and down his fleece-covered chest.

"Mayonnaise Boy, that you?" Snake Tattoo Guy's gruff voice could have been a chorus of angels, as good as it sounded to Soos.

"Hello, sir! Is everything ok?"

"Well, I- I don't rightly think so. Mr. Pines just called and he said yer grandma fell on over trying to help 'im with his party. I'm sorry, Mayo, she's at th' hospital. I found yer walkie and 've been drivin' 'round tryin' to catch a signal on you. Sure glad I did. 'm at th' Dusk. Where're you at?"

It was the longest and worst thing Snake Tattoos Guy had ever said to him.

"We, uh, we'll meet you there, sir." Soos replied, "We have a- a problem, sir."

"What kind?"

"I'm sorry…"

"What is it?"

"A ghost. It's a ghost."

"Loud 'n clear, ranger. I can help ya with that. Come quick. Over."

Static screamed in Soos' ear as Snake Tattoos Guy's voice disappeared.

"Soos, Soos! What's wrong?" Raoul reached across the car to press a hand against his shoulder.

"I- I… I think the ghost got Abuelita, guys."

It was a stupid thing to think of, curled up with his legs getting scraped by the litter all over the car floor, and some ghostly weirdo out there in the loud-silent night, but he really wanted to take the bit about messing up out of Soos' Guide to Fixin' Stuff.