Gravity Rises (S1)

FE: Part Four

Mabel blinked. "Y-yeah," she said. "I mean, nobody ever believed my theories back home, except maybe Dipper, and I thought. . ." She trailed off.

"You thought you'd be able to connect easily with Ford," Melody finished.

Mabel nodded.

Melody let a few beats of silence pass as she laced up her skates. "Can I tell you a story?"

Mabel glanced up at her. "Sure."

"Once upon a time, I was a little girl," Melody started. Mabel realized at that moment that she had no idea how old Melody was. Early thirties, maybe? She seemed so young; but if she was, she was wise beyond her years. "Way back in the eighties," she added. Probably mid-thirties, then.

"I've lived in this town all my life, you know. I don't know about Ford, but he's certainly been here as long as I have. Well, he used to keep to himself, back before he turned his property into the Mystery Museum; but there were plenty of rumors about him. We kids would sneak up to his property to see the flashing lights at night or hear the strange noises. Some kids thought he was a poacher or zookeeper — we'd hear some weird things. Our parents told us to leave well enough alone, but that never works with kids. Sometimes, if we were really lucky, we would see him leaving on a monster hunt."

"A monster hunt?" Mabel asked, partly to show she was listening and partly because, well, she was listening.

"Yep. We didn't know for certain, but we'd all seen glimpses of the supernatural around the forest. Our parents never believed us; they thought we were just being kids. I suppose we were; because the older we got, the more my friends seemed to forget about the supernatural; until one day we were adults, and I seemed to be the only one who knew about the strangeness of the town." She paused a bit, lost in thought, but then continued. "Well, like I said, sometimes we would see Ford leaving to go on a monster hunt. Once, I was really lucky, and I saw him come back. He had this big sack, and something inside was fighting to get out. I didn't see what it was, and I didn't see who the other guys with him were, but I could see Ford. And you know what he looked like?"

"What?"

Melody pushed Mabel's shoulder gently. "He looked like you," she said, "when you get all excited about something. It's the same look in your eyes as he had."

Mabel paused to think about that. "So. . . what changed?"

Melody shrugged. "Nobody knows. One day, before the early eighties turned mid-eighties, he stopped coming out at all. The townsfolk weren't concerned, because they knew he minded his own business, but we kids knew. The flashing lights stopped; the noises stopped; the monster hunts stopped. At first we just chalked it up to bad luck — we thought we weren't waiting and watching at the right times — but one day we all realized he hadn't done any of those things for months. He'd come out to buy groceries, and maybe he'd give you a nod if you were lucky. But otherwise, he was quiet. We all lost interest, because we were growing up, and there was nothing to watch. It wasn't until I came back from college that I saw he'd opened the Mystery Museum." Melody sighed. "I haven't seen that gleam in his eyes since I was a kid. He still does some research — I'm sure he's showed you some of it — but he mostly stays here. He makes attractions for the Museum — first all of them real, then some of them fake, then most of them fake — and he keeps to himself."

Mabel sat quietly for a moment. "What do you think happened that day?" she asked. "The day he stopped going on adventures?"

"I don't know," Melody said. "Whatever it was, it made him lose his passion, and fast. It must have been awful. I've been trying to work up the courage to ask him about it for years; but whenever I drop hints about it, he clams up, sometimes gets angry with me. So I figured it might not be worth it."