Archive of Our Own

When Ford shuffled into the kitchen that evening, it was to the sight of culinary chaos. Mabel was stood at the table in an apron stained with at least seven different colors, carefully piping out dollops of batter onto a sheet of wax paper set upon a cookie tray. The sink was full of dishes-- although that was hardly anything new-- and the whole of the room was spattered with nearly every kind of baking detritus he could put a name to.

“Good evening, my dear,” he yawned, stepping over an abandoned sack of flour on the floor as he headed towards the old, faithful coffee machine on the counter nearest the fridge. “Have Stanley and Dipper already left to retrieve that purchase Soos made for the Shack?”

“Yep,” she said without taking her eyes off her work. “Grunkle Stan said he wanted to make good time to Dullsville, so he threw Dipper over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and drove off before dinner time.”

Ford hummed in consideration, loading a scoop of grounds into the old filter and setting it to do its work. “And you elected not to accompany him?”

“He said it was a ‘Pines men bonding thing’,” she said. “I asked about you, but he just mumbled something about ‘alpha twins’ being ‘too high energy for this kind of job’ and ran off with a map.”

Ford rolled his eyes as the machine bubbled. “I’m certain there’s something in that collection they’re getting that he doesn’t want me to see yet. Ah, well. I suppose we’ll find out when they return.” He leaned slightly, stepping closer to the table and taking a glance at what Mabel was doing. “...What are you making?”

Mabel turned and grinned at him. “Mourning macarons!”

“Morning macarons? But it’s in the evening.”

“No, mourning macarons. For Mr. McGucket.”

He sobered a little bit. “I see. But the wake was this morning-- isn’t it a bit late for this?”

“I just can’t stop thinking about how sad he looked,” she said with a frown, “I needed to do something with my hands, and Soos hasn’t managed to get Gompers to cough up my knitting needles, so! Macarons.”

They both thought about the funeral. It had been pouring rain, then, McGucket staring down at the freshly-turned dirt with even more of a blank stare than he usually held, with his son at his side wielding a large black umbrella as the shoebox that held what was left of the former Mrs. McGucket was lowered gently into the ground.

“He did look a great deal troubled by that raccoon’s passing,” Ford murmured. “I’m just struggling to think of what could possibly lift his spirits. It’s been so long since we’ve had a conversation that wasn’t merely shop talk that I fear I may not be able to assist him as best I can.”

“Well that’s quitter talk,” Mabel said. With a quick motion, she turned and pressed a finger into his bulbous nose. “You two are best friends! If there’s anyone in town who can figure out what will make that old man stop grieving, it’s you!”

Ford smiled, gently pushing her finger away from his face with one of his own. “That’s a very sweet sentiment, Mabel. But I doubt I can make him stop grieving. I may have twelve doctorates, but none of them are in the soft sciences of psychological healthcare.”

Mabel quirked her lips. “Hm. I guess that would be kind of hard… I mean, it’s not like you can bring Mrs. McGucket back from the dead.”

She turned back to her piping bag and the wet batter, but if she said anything else Ford didn’t hear it. As the coffee machine finished its laborious death-gurgles and spat the last of his brew into the pot, he was already deep within his own mind.

That night, Mabel was awoken from her slumber by the sound of the attic door slamming wide open.

“I’ve come up with a brilliant idea!”

She bolted up with a scream, hucking the nearest closest object at the source of the noise. As the ominous silhouette in the door rapidly approached, the stuffed furby smacked it dead in the face to little effect. The sound of papers fluttering filled the air, and the shadowy figure clicked on the lamp that was resting on the table under the window.

It was Grunkle Ford, arms piled high with loose-leaf papers and a number of books that he proceeded to slam down on the table with little care. He looked like he hadn’t bothered going to bed, too tormented by Mr. McGucket’s grief to even attempt to sleep. Mabel rubbed the sleep out of her eyes as he paced the room and gesticulated with his newly-freed hands. She looked at the clock- the digital numbers told her it was four AM.

“You’ll recall our conversation from last night, that comment of yours? I realized, it’s all so simple! It’s just a raccoon- there’s no soul within it that needs to be called back from beyond the veil and then bound to its physical form, no injuries severe enough to require replacement parts,” he rambled pleasantly, “and best of all, I’ve already obtained quite the number of primary resources on the matter of reconstitution and revivification!”

“Revivi-wha?” she asked, still half-asleep. Mabel shook her head. “Grunkle Ford, you lost me.”

He spun in place, jabbing his pointer finger almost into her face with a wide, toothy smile and blown-out pupils. “Re-awakening the deceased, Mabel!”

She blinked. “Necromancy? Your answer on how to cheer up McGucket is necromancy?”

“But of course! He misses his pet because it passed away, so if I can bring it back, he won’t have need to be upset any longer.”

“That’s sound logic if I ever heard it!” Mabel replied with a smile, only giving it a half-moment’s thought. Old man McGucket had had stranger reactions to far more mundane things, and underwhelming reactions to things much more bizarre, so who was she to predict his behavior? “But how are you gonna do it? Dipper raised some zombies last year with one of your spells, but that definitely didn’t make them alive again.”

Ford waved off her concerns. “Ah, that was because he used the wrong curse. Raising someone from the dead without them becoming a zombie, vampire, ghost, or some equally heinous form of revenant requires precision and deliberateness! The one from my journal was a cursed designed by a novice wizard trying to raise his own army of the undead. He failed to account for controlling them after they arose, and well…” he cleared his throat. “Anyway. It’s an incantation with no current use to us.”

“Hm…” Mabel squinted in thought. “Well, if you got a plan for turning Mr. McGucket’s frown upside-down, consider me a bunny rabbit, because I’m all ears! But maybe we can wait until the sun is up?”

“No time. Every second we wait is another second that his beloved pet is decomposing, so time is of the essence! You don’t need to worry, however-- I’ve already collected a list of necessary ingredients, which in all likelihood are already contained within the Shack. All we need is the body.”

It was then that she realized that, rather than his blue hoodie, he was wearing some kind of long, dark cloak like a grave-robber. He held out a bundle of fabric to her in the same color as what he was wearing, and when she unfurled it, it was the same cloak in miniature.

“Woah, a tiny creeper cape! Grunkle Ford, did you make this just for me?”

“Oh, no. I’ve had this cloak prepared for quite some time! It’s meant for Dipper, but he’s out of town on that errand with Stan, so it should be fine for you to use for now.”

She rubbed at her eyes and hopped out of bed, trying to shake some focus into her brain. “Alright! Lemme get my Frankenstein sweater and we can get go- going...” she yawned again as Ford left the room.

“Fantastic! I’ll go fetch the shovels from the shed out back and collect the ingredients for the revivification serum. Meet me by the gift shop when you’re ready.”

By the time Mabel had gotten dressed, rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, and shambled downstairs, Ford was already waiting in the kitchen. He’d swept the dining table clear of what had laid there before and replaced it with a new mess, and was currently staring down in consternation at a sheet of paper in his hands.

“What’s wrong?” Mabel asked. She opened the cabinet and grabbed a couple of granola bars for breakfast, munching down on one as she handed the other to Ford, who didn’t even glance at her before he started snacking automatically.

He hemmed and hawed under his breath as he chewed, staring down at the last item on his list. “Well, the only thing we still need is arsenic-- a taxidermical preservative-- but Stanley’s all out of stock and I’m unsure if he has a supplier for it, let alone who that supplier was. And with the size of Gravity Falls, I doubt we’ll be able to source what we need without leaving town entirely, which we’re unable to do as Stanley’s taken his car and Soos won’t allow me to drive his truck.”

“Wait, why won’t he let you drive his truck?”

“Ah, it’s not important. Some people are protective over their vehicles-- my own brother is no exception to that!” He folded the paper shut and tucked it into the hoodie under his cloak. “What is important is replacing that arsenic in a timely manner. The last thing we want is that cadaver decomposing even further.”

“Yeah, and she wasn’t in the greatest shape before they buried her, even after I helped with that funeral makeover…” Mabel mumbled regretfully. “Where do we even get arsenic? I thought it was a poison.”

“Oh, it’s considered one now, but in previous centuries it was used as a preservative for its anti-bacterial properties. However, I’ve determined that a good substitute for it would be borax-- it’s much more suited to treating mammalian furs, which will be useful considering our future specimen’s needs. In addition, it can be found in local stores with significantly more ease, if its not already somewhere in the Shack.”

“And we can take care of that after we get the body?”

“Of course!”

Into the darkness of way-too-early in the morning they ventured. Fresh dew was just beginning to settle on the grass, and only the occasional hoot of an owl indicated that there were any other living things in the world besides the two of them.

Ford hucked two shovels into the backseat of the golf cart and set himself in the driver’s seat. When Mabel had sat down and started to buckle herself in, he straightened up, adjusted the rearview mirror, flicked the after-market headlights on, carefully started the cart… and peeled out of the yard like a bat out of hell. Mabel clung to the armrest of her seat with a yelp, her hair flying behind her from the sudden force of motion. Ford, unbuckled, seemed entirely unbothered, cheerily humming to himself as he careened down the winding dirt road leading from the house to Gopher Road.

“Hey, uh, Grunkle Ford?” Mabel asked sweetly.

“Yes?” He turned to look at her, eyes off the road, hardly noticing as the front of the cart impacted with a gnome and sent it bouncing off into the bushed.

“I thought you said you knew how to drive?”

“I do!” he frowned, only looking back at the road when Mabel yelped and pointed out a deer. He swerved around it, drifting sideways almost into an errant tree.

“And when was the last time you drove?”

That, he didn’t seem to have an answer for. He mumbled something under his breath and avoided eye contact.

“What was that?”

Ford waved one hand in a circular gesture and made an odd noise in the back of his throat. “I said, Stanley hasn’t yet let me get behind the wheel since my return.”

“You haven’t driven a car in thirty years?” she asked incredulously.

“I am capable of piloting far more dangerous vehicles than a golf cart, Mabel, he said defensively. As he said this, the pothole he’d raced over sent them airborne for a terrifying three entire seconds. They bounced back against the road like a rubber ball as the tired scrabbled for traction against the wet asphalt. “I’ve driven starships that could clear galaxies in a matter of seconds, this is hardly rocket science.”

“There’s like a bajillion miles of nothing in space, Grunkle Ford! There’s nothing to hit out there!” She leaned over and yanked at the wheel, helping them narrowly miss a car coming at them from the opposite lane. They veered up the path that led to the Northwest mansion, skirting death at the edge of the road that overlooked the long, steep path down the hillside of the estate.

“You may have a point,” Ford tried to concede after a long period of silence. “Then again--” he yanked the wheel and executed a perfect drift that landed then smack at the grave of Mrs. McGucket, “perhaps I just needed a little bit of practice to get used to Earth vehicular piloting.”

Mabel stayed in the cart for a few extra moments as Ford disembarked and grabbed the shovels. When he rounded the vehicle, she slid out of her seat on unsteady legs to grab one out of his hands, as well as a small head-mounted flashlight.

“Whew! Remind me not to bet on you in a race,” she mumbled.

Ford waited for her at the grave, fixing a headlamp over his forehead and aiming the beam down at the dirt. Or, considering the recent weather, the mound of mud that was supposed to be a grave.

“Welp! No time like the present!” He stabbed the point of his shovel into the ground, Mabel following suit a moment later. Between the two of them, and the relative shallowness of the grave, it wasn’t very difficult to uncover the body. They knew they’d reached it when Ford’s shovel speared downward and hit something that went “crack” instead of “schick”. The two of them winced, and peered at their feet.

In the sharp beam of their flashlights, they could see that the box was already disintegrating from the previous rain and the wet earth, barely able to cover the raccoon’s body anymore. His shovel had struck its head, buried an inch or two deep.

“Ooh,” Mabel grimaced, “That miiight be a problem.”

Ford shook himself and waved her off after he pulled the metal back out with an odd squelch. “Nonsense, my dear, it should be perfectly fine. It certainly isn’t the worst thing to happen to this poor creature.” He leaned down and scooped his hands underneath it and lifted it out of the dirt. They looked at it consideringly in the harsh light of their headlamps.

“...Ah, Mabel, if you wouldn’t mind taking a few notes, for me? My hands are full, but I’d like to document my first observations on the specimen.”

“Sure thing, Grunkle Ford.” She reached into the front pocket of his hoodie and tugged out the blue leather of his fourth journal. Flipping to a blank page, she held a glittery pen aloft. “Observe away!”

He took another look at the body. It was missing fur, not just from where he’d brained it from the digging but on its shoulder as well. There were still skidmarks on its torso from the car that had hit it. “Hm. The rigor mortis stage appears to have passed. There’s minor loss of muscle tone, and the specimen feels lighter than before. It has several points of moderate damage to the subcutaneous tissue, including blunt-force trauma to the upper torso and a, er. A partially-cleaved skull. Not sure what could have done that.”

Mabel let out a giggle and scribbled a little harder. He cleared his throat.

“Anyways. Decomposers also appear to have made their home in the specimen, which means we’ll need a way to undo the rot that has set in and remove any potential parasites hidden under the flesh that we may not yet be able to see at this point.”

“Can’t you do all this observing back at the Shack, Grunkle Ford? Why not wait just a little bit? That way we can look at everything we’ve gotta fix all at once.”

“Well, Mabel, it’s important to take initial stock in any situation, including any information that may change very soon-- for instance, now that I’ve disturbed the cadaver it may experience further injury as we transport it, which will help indicate both how far along the decay has set and how much work we have ahead of us.”

She twirled the pen in her fingers and shrugged as he moved the raccoon to the heavy burlap sack they’d brought. “I guess that makes sense. We can think about what we can do to start fixing her on the way back and then jump right into it.”

“Precisely!” Ford tied off the sack and stood with a smile, hoisting it over his shoulder like an overexcited burglar. It made a wet slap as it hit his back.

“Should we fill the grave back in?”

They both looked at the now-empty hole, and the piles of heavy, sopping dirt around it.

“...It’ll be fine,” he said. “By the time they notice, we’ll have done what we’ve needed to, and Fiddleford will have his pet again.”

“You mean his wife?”

He pat her shoulder indulgently. “There are many things I’ve learned to concede my ground upon. This is not one of them.”

“You literally called her ‘Mrs. McGucket’ in your notes.”

“I can’t help it if that’s the name he chose to give it. People choose ridiculous pet names all the time.”

“I’m gonna choose to think that I didn’t hear you say that.”

Upon their return to the Shack, Ford was quick to act. He made a beeline for the kitchen, hardly waiting for Mabel to keep up-- he was far more used to Stanley’s scrambling pace and was mentally anticipating that she’d do the same, but when he set the sack with Mrs. McGucket on the dining table and turned to address his great niece, she was nowhere to be found. He turned the other way, in case he’d missed her, but she wasn’t there either.

It wasn’t until he noticed that the sun was starting to rise that he realized that he had woken her up at a bit of an unreasonable hour. Perhaps she needed to catch up on the rest he’d made her miss out on. Sheepishly, he wondered if he shouldn’t have set up their workstation in his basement laboratory rather than in the kitchen-- they could probably do with a bit of food, and they probably shouldn’t prepare it in the same space as all these deadly chemicals-- but he shook the thought off. It should be a relatively quick process to reanimate Fiddleford’s pet, and they’d both eaten a granola bar before they left. It should be fine.

So with that, Ford set about preparing the table for work. The ingredients were organized on one side, on the other there was a large working tray with leather straps, and his set of alchemical equipment and dissection tools were laid out in-between. With Mrs. McGucket wrapped up in a towel and occupying the fridge until it was time to revive her, there was nothing left to be done. As he straightened an old scalpel, he heard the sound of footsteps entering the kitchen.

“Alright, I think we’re just about ready to--” Ford stopped. “Er, Mabel. What are you wearing?”

She did a little twirl, finishing with a jazz-hands as she displayed her outfit. “I’m wearing my favorite science grunkle!”

She was, indeed, dressed up in his preferred fashion; there were a pair of practical black boots on her feet, some sensible trousers-- with pockets, it looked like, which he didn’t have but was now starting to think that he should-- a hand-knit burgundy sweater just like his favorite one, a bandolier that held a set of crochet hooks in varying sizes, and a smaller, cleaner trenchcoat that had star-shaped patches on the elbows. To bring the ensemble together, she also had a pair of lenseless glasses that matched the ones he was wearing right now. He smiled softly, touched by the display.

“Whatever for?”

“Well, Dipper and me were gonna dress up as you and Grunkle Stan this year for Summerween, but then Soos needed that weird collection picked up from Dullsville and they’re both only gonna be back late tonight. It would’ve looked better if he was here. But Stan helped us out with the authenticity! Look!” She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a photo, offering it up for Ford’s inspection.

It was a reenactment. Mabel and Dipper were standing together on the benches of the little rowboat Stanley kept at the lake, poised as if they were himself and his brother on that old wreck back at Glass Shard Beach.

“That’s-- that’s very sweet, Mabel. I’m honored to be your inspiration for your costume this year.”

She beamed up at him and cheered, “Now let’s get our mad science on!”

“Wait, wouldn’t you rather change into something else so that your costume doesn’t get ruined?”

“Are you kidding me? Anything that happens to my outfit while we fix Mrs. McGucket is perfect! Then I’ll have Real Science wear-and-tear. You can’t get more authentic than that.”

“I suppose I can’t argue with that logic. And you’ve chosen a very good material for your own trenchcoat…” Ford smiled, tugging at her sleeve with approval. Sturdy cotton twill, well-suited for the prospective researcher’s traveling needs. Good against bites and minor slashes, as well. “Very well. We’ll continue as normal. Though…”

He plucked the glasses off her nose and replaced them with a set of safety goggles. “There we are! Now we can continue as planned.”

“Heck yeah! Let’s commit a crime against nature!”

He grinned at her enthusiasm. “First things first: preparing the serum. The instructions for the reanimation serum are set up by the sink so it won’t be at risk of damage. I’ve already got them memorized, but if you’d like to follow along with what I’m doing, that’s where they’ll be. Since we didn’t have the arsenic, I’ve had to substitute it with borax-- luckily, I found a box of the stuff tucked away behind the washing machine in the laundry room!”

Mabel checked the instructions for the serum, minding the large bold letters at the top of the page that said “NO SUBSTITUTIONS” in dark red.

“Uh, Grunkle Ford? Are you sure we can swap out the arsenic? The recipe says--”

He waved her off, already measuring out a portion into a flask. “Don’t worry about that, Mabel, it’s no trouble.”

“But you said raising the dead right needs precision. Like baking!”

He made a noise of disagreement and teetered his palm without confidence. “Well, sort of. Sometimes substitutions and alterations are required. The recipe we have is for humans, and the raccoon in our fridge is anything but that. There are some differences we do need to account for.”

She looked back at the page, frowning in consideration. “Alright… but I’m reserving the right to say, ‘I told you so’ if it goes all ‘Evening of the Un-Alivened’ on us.”

“You are certainly free to feel that way, my dear,” Ford said, eyeballing a drop of some black, tar-like substance into a vial in his hand. “Now come over this way-- there are some rather exciting chemical reactions that I believe you may find an interest in, considering your proclivity for those glitter-bombs I gifted you last year.”

An hour-and-a-half later, after one explosive mishap and a near-fire, the two of them stood crouched by an unbroken flask on the table. Mabel was holding it still with a pair of crucible tongs while Ford hovered perilously close to the mixture with a glass pipette, tongue sticking out of his mouth in concentration as he squeezed the smallest drop of liquid from it and into the flask below.

There was a flash, and the murky color of its contents spewed a small, skull-shaped cloud of particles into the air just above the mouth of the vessel before the whole thing turned an alarming shade of radioactive candy-apple-green.

They held still a moment longer, watching as the liquid settled in the glass, and when nothing further happened, they both stood up with a relieved sigh.

“There we are! One potion of revivification, ready for one unsuspecting raccoon corpse. And it’s only…” He squinted at the window, gauging something with his hand, “What, eight in the morning?”

“Seven forty-nine,” Mabel said, checking the little flip phone in her pocket. “Yeesh, it’s that early, still? Feels like we’ve been at this for ages.”

“Yes, time does fly when one gets scientific exploration involved,” Ford chuckled. He plucked a cork from the table and plugged up the mouth of the flask before setting it down on the table. “The serum will need to sit for another hour or so to help the contents settle and prevent any explosive results, but beyond that, I believe we’re done with everything but the actual resurrection itself.”

Mabel stretched her back and let out a yawn. “Great, because I missed breakfast and I am starving.”

As if to agree, Ford’s stomach let out an angry gurgle. “Ah. Yes, food. Stanley’s been working to wean me off of my dietary supplements, and while I cannot discount their use, there’s something to be said for a hearty, filling meal. Especially one that’s home-cooked!” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together, remembering his dirty safety gloves only when the wet slap left spackles of glowing green goo on his hoodie. He peeled them both off and tossed them sinkward, where the rubber landed on the ever-growing pile of dishes. Mabel followed suit, then replaced her safety goggles with the fake-prescription glasses.

They both looked from the sink to the mess they’d collectively made of the dining table, considered their grumbling bellies, and turned as one to each other.

“Greasy’s diner?” Ford smiled sheepishly.

“Greasy’s diner,” Mabel agreed, then gestured to the mess on Ford’s clothes. “Though you might wanna put something else on.”

“An excellent opportunity for me to slip into my own costume,” he said. “Would you mind swiping a few dollars from the register for the meal while I change? I don’t carry paper currency, and considering how much higher the prices are for everything, I doubt the waitresses will appreciate being paid in a pile of coins. At least, the last few didn’t.”

“I’ll write a note for Soos and Melody so they can keep it balanced,” Mabel said. “You go and get your spook on!”

When he’d changed-- and it had been into a poor-man’s wolf costume, complete with a ratty old flannel shirt, a hunk of tail-shaped fabric tied to a belt, and a pair of discounted dog ears-- the two of them left for breakfast. By the time they got back, bellies satiated, Ford was antsy to complete his work.

“So what do we do now? Just pour that stuff on her?”

“More or less. Although once it’s alive again, it will need a bath.”

“She probably would appreciate a nice spa day after spending all that time underground,” Mabel said. “Do you think raccoons like bubble bath bombs?”

“Mabel, my dear, I would be hard-pressed to find anyone that doesn’t appreciate a good explosive, bubble-bath-themed or not.” He pat her head gently. “Now, do you want to prepare the cat carrier and the restraints, or retrieve the specimen?”

“Cat carrier, please! I want it to be extra-fancy so she’ll be all prettied up for Mr. McGucket.” Mabel paused. “Oh, but wait- shouldn’t we test out that potion, first? You said you had to make some changes since she’s a raccoon and not a person.”

“Ah, I knew I was forgetting something,” Ford said. He turned to the window and reached outside it, grasping something on the other side. It was a small terra-cotta pot with an extremely dead-looking plant sitting inside of it. “I’m sure Mrs. Ramirez won’t mind if we use this to verify the efficacy of our little concoction. Not sure she knows she ever had it.”

He tossed the little pot onto the table, grabbed the flask, and after fussing with the stopper, dribbled a few drops at the withered base of its stem. For a moment, nothing happened. Then it began to glow, and to wriggle, and then to straighten up, the husk of its form filling out and regaining its vibrancy until a plain little daisy stood tall and well.

“Wo-ho-hoah!” Mabel crowed. “Mr. McGucket, prepare to have your heart mended!” She left the room with a little cackle at full pelt, percolating thoughts of heart-bowed ribbons.

Ford moved the plant back to its spot in the window-box and promptly forgot about it, moving to the fridge to pull out the cadaver like a prize roast. He set it down on the kitchen table, secured its limbs with the little leather cuffs at each and of the dissection tray, and trickled the serum gently over Mrs. McGucket’s dead body.

The radioactive brightness of the liquid flashed as it splattered against its fur, then faded entirely as it sank into the decomposing flesh. The flesh healed over-- the compressed part of its ribcage where the car had struck it reinflated like a balloon, and soon the dead raccoon on the table was twitching and squeaking like the living thing it now was.

“Success!” Ford clapped. “Won’t Fiddleford be delighted to see you?”

It hissed at him, eyes flashing as green as the magic that coursed through its muscles.

Mabel came back into the kitchen, holding one of Ford’s old cat carriers that had once been used to house interesting living specimens while he studied them. It was now covered in red and pink ribbons, with an assortment of delightful heart-shaped stickers on each of its sides.

She slammed it on the table as Ford began to remove the raccoon’s restraints. It didn’t fight as he scooped it up and stuffed it in, though it did turn to stare out the front grate with a wide-eyed stare.

Mabel peered through the bars, squinting a little at the green, foamy spit that dribbled down either side of Mrs. McGucket’s chin. A bit skeptically, she said, “Grunkle Ford, as much of a believer I am in the power of True Love conquering all, I’m starting to think that maybe green spit isn’t normal.”

“Nonsense, Mabel,” Ford reassured her as he tucked the cage under his arm. “I double-checked my calculations and we performed a successful preliminary test with Mrs. Ramirez’s plant. This raccoon is just as alive as any that hadn’t yet expired.”

“If you say so!”

The two of them marched back out to the golf cart, which now had a ding in the bumper from the trip to the diner, and Ford secured the carrier to the back seat while Mabel got buckled in.

“Do you think Mr. McGucket will recognize her?”

Ford hopped into the front seat and turned the ignition. At Mabel’s expectant look, he sheepishly secured his own seatbelt.

“It’s possible! He never used to be an animal person, despite having grown up on a farm. Or rather, he was never the sort of person to appreciate the natural fauna of Gravity Falls. He liked regular animals just fine.”

The two of them peeled out of the Shack’s parking lot at great speed-- Mabel in a mood much improved now that she was anticipating Ford’s particular driving style. On the way to the Northwest mansion, she whooped and hollered at each bump and jostle even as Ford narrowly avoided an accident at each bend.

When they pulled up to the front of the McGucket household, the old man was outside by the fountain, fussing with some project of his.

“Fiddleford, my friend,” Ford said as he struggled to put the golf cart into park. After disentangling himself from the seatbelt, he leaped out of the front seat and rushed to grab the carrier. Mabel brushed her hair back out of her face and hopped out alongside, cheer and chipper as a girl running on seven hours of sleep could be.

“Stanford! It’s good t’ see you again,” Fiddleford greeted Ford with a warm hug, looping his lanky arms around the other man and giving him a good squeeze. “But why so soon?”

“Ah, well, I was working on a little surprise for you. To cheer you up after… what happened.” He hoisted the cat carrier that he was holding in one hand and pulled away the cloth that had covered it.

“Wowie! And empty cat carrier!” Fiddleford reached out and took it with a delighted smile. “This’ll help me t’ catch a new wifey for sure.”

Ford balked. “Empty? He echoed. “It’s not supposed to be empty.”

Fiddleford cocked his head. “It’s not?”

Ford crouched to his level, pulling the carrier until the grate faced him. It was untouched and ajar, the only sign anything had ever been within it a small, foamy puddle of gently-glowing green goo.

“Ah. Hm. That’s… not good.”

“Grunkle Ford? Can we sidebar for a second?” Mabel was at his side, tugging not-quite-gently on his sleeve.

“What is it?” he leaned in close.

She hissed in his ear, “What are we gonna do?! Mrs. McGucket is loose in the woods, and it’s not gonna be a very happy reunion if she gets eaten by a bear or a wolf or something before we can get her back home!”

“I-- we’ll think of something, don’t worry.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully as McGucket tottered off with the carrier, none the wiser.

There was a ringing noise from Mabel. She reached into one of the many pockets on her person, pulling out a phone, and answered it.

“Hey, little dudette,” Soos’ voice met her ear. “Is Mr. Dr. Pines there? I think you both gotta hear what went down.”

“He’s here,” Mabel said. “I’ll put you on speaker.” She tapped a few buttons on her phone and lifted it up. “You’re speaking to a live studio audience, Soos. Fire away!”

“Alright, so you guys know those plants my abuelita put outside the kitchen window? The ones that died because the gnomes keep using that spot as a bathroom? Well, turns out one of them came back from the dead and it’s kind of super evil? And started attacking everyone?”

Ford grimaced tightly. “Is anyone hurt?”

“Oh, no way, dude, it’s all good. Me and Melody got it all handled. We like, totally whipped up a couple of flamethrowers with her hairspray and some of Mr. Pines’ confiscated lighters and went to town on those suckers. They’re toast! But there was a squirrel that got in and I guess started munching on ‘em before we did that? Because now we’ve got a glow-y green squirrel that’s basically rabid and trying to bite everyone, haha. We’re gonna try to put it in one of your extra cages, but we’ll let you know if anyone gets got. Man, it’s like a zombie outbreak, or something-- and I should know! Anyways, I’m gonna hang up now. Melody found the net we use for getting the gnomes out of the trash and we’re gonna try to use it on the squirrel. Hope nothing catastrophically terrible is happening to you two!”

Mabel flipper her phone shut. “Grunkle Ford?”

“Yes, Mabel?”

“I think we messed up.”

“Yes, I do believe we may have.”

She tucked her phone back into one of the inner pockets and tugged at the ends of her hair. “Augh, Mrs. McGucket could be anywhere, and it sounds like she might be able to zombify anyone she bites!”

“There’s no need to panic-- yet,” Ford tried to soothe her, even as a nervous sweat built up on the back of his neck. “We simply need to make a plan of action. Find some way to track it down or predict where it’s going. What do we know about its behavior?”

“Well, McGucket said she liked rummaging with him through other people’s trash. Maybe she went towards town?”

“I’m not sure if that’s--”

There was an exclamation from where McGucket had wandered off to. When they looked over, he was speaking to a floating drone. “Wait, wait-- Tater, what’d’you mean there’s some kinda demonic wild critter tearin’ up trashcans in town?”

“Scratch that-- maybe you are correct.”

“I’m always right,” Mabel stated as if it were a given, already in the passenger’s seat of the cart. “Now let’s move! We got people to save and a raccoon wife to collect.”

“Right you are.” Ford slid across the hood of the cart and swung around to the driver’s side.

Mabel wracked her brain as the golf cart whizzed down the road, scattering wildlife and other drivers in equal measure. “Ok, so how do we stop a rampaging raccoon from turning everyone in town into a bunch of glowy, gooey zombies?”

“If we stop back by the Shack, I do have an assortment of laser-based weaponry which should take care of it without the risk of spreading--”

“I meant, how do we stop a rampaging raccoon from turning everyone in town into a bunch of glowy, gooey zombies without turning McGucket’s wife into a pile of ashes?”

Ford snapped his mouth shut. “Ah. Well… I may have some tranquilizer darts left over from the time Stanley and I faced off against the arctic yeti this past January?”

“Perfect!”

“I have perhaps about a half dozen of them left. We’ll have to work quickly and make them count.”

"Not a lot, but better than nothing! You can take three, and I can take three, and we can both split up to cover more ground and--"

"Split up? Goodness, no, that's far too dangerous!" He exclaimed, barely flinching as he took a sharp turn and fishtailed perilously onto the wrong side of the road before he managed to correct himself.

"You took Dipper to an alien shipwreck last year and almost got shot into space jail," she pointed out.

"Ah, but we never split up. He was by my side the whole time under adult supervision."

"Well, I'm a whole year older than he was then! Heck, I'll be fourteen in like, a month and a half!" Mabel put her hands on her hips. "Plus, we survived the apocalypse. I'm totally ready to hunt down one rabid-zombie raccoon by myself for an afternoon."

Ford hummed thoughtfully under his breath, clearly not liking the idea of it. "I don't know... you're my responsibility. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if anything happened to you while I was able to stop it."

"Nothing's gonna happen, Grunkle Ford! You wanna know why? Because I have a plan! We're gonna need a few things from the Shack..."

Not too much longer later, after a pit stop back home to retrieve the appropriate items-- and to briefly study the infected squirrel that Melody and Soos had trapped under a wicker laundry basket-- Ford peeled into the town square. The two of them leaped from their seats and surveyed the situation.

Pandemonium, mostly. While there had been decorations and tables set up for a spooky Summerween block party, the sudden appearance of the late Mrs. McGucket had brought the whole thing down-- literally, in the case of the banner announcing the event. It had been torn from its ties across the collapsible stage and now lay crumpled across it like orange viscera. People scrambled about in costume, all trying to get away from something that glowed and screeched and spit from atop a local food truck.

"There she is!" Mabel cried, pointing to get Ford's attention. Mrs. McGucket whipped her head in their direction, eyes blazing with that same uneasy green that was dripping from her frothing mouth.

Quick as a flash, Ford whipped out his tranquilizing pistol and fired off a single round. To their great surprise, she dodged it easily by tucking and rolling to one side. The dart shot off, arcing in the air before coming down on the other side of the truck. There was a startled yelp that sounded like it came from Bodacious T.

"Whoops," Ford said. The animal hissed at him. Then, as an even greater surprise, she lobbed a brick at his head. It was no trouble to dodge it, but the fact remained that she'd both recognized him as the source of the attack and chosen to retaliate accordingly.

"Great Scott! It's like it's somehow gained a higher intellectual prowess from being revived!" He threw himself behind a nearby speaker when a second brick came his way, and motioned for Mabel to do the same.

"Actually, she already knew how to do this," she explained. "McGucket trained her to throw sharp metal scraps at people who got too close to his hut in the junkyard after Nate and Lee wrote 'McSuckit' on it."

"...He would do that..." Ford muttered under his breath with a sigh. "Blast. If we can't get close enough for a clean shot, we won't be able to safely capture and retrieve it."

"Trust me, my plan's going to work," Mabel said. "You got the song all pulled up on TubeTube?"

"I have loaded it to my cellular device, yes," Ford said, then squinted at the phone in his hand. "I think."

"Great! I'm gonna try and sneak behind her. When I give the signal, you turn up the volume!"

Mabel crouched low, waited until Mrs. McGucket had turned to attack some other escaping townsperson, and shuffled to the front of the food truck. At the same time Ford fussed with the speaker behind which he was hiding, locating the audio jack in order to hook it up to his phone. When the speaker hummed with mild feedback, Ford leaned out from behind it and gave Mabel a thumbs-up before the raccoon noticed him and lobbed third brick at him. He wondered to himself where it kept finding them.

Mabel gave him a thumbs-up back as she readied her trick-or-treat bag, repurposed for the citizen’s arrest of one Mrs. McGucket. She was crouched on the top of the truck’s cabin, half-hidden in the little lip between it and the flat top of the truck’s body where her target sat screeching at any passers-by who came too close.

At once, the sound of banjo music filled the air. It was jaunty and whimsical, and it made her want to tap her feet. But she stayed put, fingers tightening around the lip of the bag as she waited for the right time.

Mrs. McGucket lifted her head at the new sound. She cocked it one way, then the other, that fluffy raccoon tail of hers twitching back and forth in what Mabel could only assume was rapturous enjoyment of hillbilly music.

Ford saw what she didn’t a moment before it all broke apart. “Mabel!” he cried, “Watch out!”

Mrs. McGucket had not been soothed by the music. No, she had instead raised her hackles and bared her teeth, and with Mabel only able to see her from the back, there was no way to notice how she’d primed herself for a fight. When Mabel tried to crawl up onto the truck, the slightest squeak of her shoes against the metal gave her away, and Mrs. McGucket whipped around and struck.

Ford let out a wordless shout as she tackled Mabel’s face, heart dropping to his stomach as the two of them tumbled down the front of the food truck together and hit the asphalt below. His feet were already carrying him over, all sense of self-preservation forgotten as he slid to a stop on his knees and punched the animal off of his great-niece.

“Mabel! No, Mabel,” he said, scooping her up in his arms. “I never should have been so reckless! You--”

He stopped, taking in the sight of her with closer inspection. Her face was blessedly unmauled, no scratches or bites to be found. She was grinning up at him, excitement burning in her eyes.

“I’m alright!” she chirped pleasantly. “The coat kept her from biting me-- see?” She helf up her arms, where the thick and practical fabric of the coat and her sweater had stopped Mrs. McGucket from breaking her skin and infecting her with the serum. The green spit oozed between the fibers, soaking into both articles of clothing, but she was entirely unharmed. The raccoon, by comparison, was flopped over on the street beside her, drooling onto the pavement with a tranquilizer dart sticking out of her side.

Ford let out a deep sound of relief and hugged Mabel tight to him. She squeaked from the pressure but held him back just as tightly, her small arms finding their way under his and her strong hands pressed flat to his back.

“Oh, Mabel, I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. If I’d only listened to you, none of this would have happened.”

“That’s not true, Grunkle Ford! I was completely on-board with raising Mrs. McGcuket from the dead-- I know how that stuff turns out, and I did it anyways! Something was bound to go wrong.”

“But it wouldn’t have threatened the town if it hadn’t escaped during my reckless driving, and it wouldn’t have tried attacking people if I’d slowed down and tested my serum more thoroughly than I did.”

Mabel pat his back and leaned away to look up at him, her smile as sweet as sugar. “You just wanted to cheer up Mr. McGucket! That’s not a bad thing. Sure, we may have played with the forces of life and death and spat in the face of god for a wild raccoon, but it’s the thought that counts, doesn’t it?”

Ford smiled softly, even as the raccoon snarled and tried to wriggle her way closer to them. He pulled out his tranquilizing gun and popped a second dart into the animal without breaking eye contact. “Perhaps, but I put you in harm’s way because I was too proud to take the advice of others. A folly I find myself falling into time and time again.”

“Aw, don’t be too hard on yourself, Stanford,” came a voice from behind them both. Ford and Mabel looked up to see Old Man McGucket shuffling towards them, trailed by some kind of scarecrow-themed robot that held a broom in its hands. “This ain’t nothing that can’t be fixed with a little elbow grease and some time.”

“Wait, you’re not upset?” Ford blinked.

“Not too much, no,” Fiddleford replied. “You went outta yer way t’ try and make me feel better. Sure, you created an undead abomination that ran rampant through town and nearly killed yer great-niece, but that’s hardly th’ worst thing that’s happened to this town, ‘specially by yer hand!” he cackled once and slapped his thigh.

At Ford’s wince, he stepped a little closer and rested his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “What I mean to say is, yer heart’s in the right place. Always has been, by my reckoning. The both’ve you. It’s awful sweet to be thinking of an old man and his dead raccoon wife. Speakin’ of which...”

He scuttled around them to Mrs. McGucket. With a swipe of his beard and a motion too quick for either of them to really see, the animal disappeared and was replaced with the affectionately-decorated cat carrier Mabel had earlier left at the Northwest mansion.

“Now, if’n you’ll excuse me, I outta get my little lady home. This street-sweepin’ bot’ll help with the cleanup and repair of what all she done wrecked, and th’ Summerween block party should rightly start up again after that.”

“We can help with the cleanup,” Ford offered immediately. “After all, it’s our fault--”

“No, no, it’s no trouble. Y’all just enjoy yourselves, y’hear? Get out and have some make-believe fun instead. I heard it’s good for the blood pressure.”

With that, he tottered off, the cat carrier with Mrs. McGucket inside rattling and and making a low groaning noise.

“Should we…?” Mabel started.

“We should check on that later to make sure he doesn’t get zombified, yes.”

Hours later, after a second round of clean-up in the Mystery Shack’s gift shop from the squirrel’s escape attempt, Ford watched Mabel shuffle laboriously towards the living room couch and flop limply upon it. After barely a moment’s hesitation, he followed suit.

“Grunkle Ford?”

“Yes, my dear?”

“Next time we raise the dead, can we maybe double-check that they’re not evil, first?”

“That seems prudent.” They both sighed deeply.

“...You know,” Ford said, picking up the TV guide from one of the couch cushions, “I think they’re running a horror-movie marathon tonight.”

“...The good kind, or the bad kind?”

He squinted at the page. “It looks to be a solid B-minus. They’ve got something called, ‘This Is The Third Time We’ve Killed Dracula’.”

“Ooh, vampires! That’s a type of undead I haven’t been tormented by yet.”

“Then vampires it shall be. You know, for all my research, I haven’t yet personally encountered--”

The back door opened with a slam. The two of them jumped slightly, still keyed-up from the hubbub of the day, and looked over to see that Stanley and Dipper were trudging in through the back door. They were in a terrible state, with leaves in their hair and mysterious stains on their costumes.

“Ah, Stanley, Dipper-- you’re home! How did that errand go?”

Dipper cast a haunted look at him. “I’ve seen the eye of horror, and it blinked first.”

Ford nodded appreciatively as he yawned. “Excellent, my boy. Intimidation is key when dealing with beings beyond the veil of human comprehension.”

“I think I might be possessed by some kinda demon… cat-thing?” Stanley offered, brushing a few shards of some rock-like substance from his shoulders. “I’m apparently supposed to be looking for some jerk called the ‘Key-Master’, but I’m already married to an old fossil with a gold tooth, so whoever it is can take a hike.”

Mabel waved him off. “Don’t worry, Grunkle Stan, I’m sure we can get you un-possessed before you start going crazy. Right, Grunkle Ford?”

The man was asleep, his head leaned back against the couch as he began to snore.

Stanley shook his head and smirked as he dragged an exhausted Dipper over to the couch by the back of his suit’s collar. “Eh, it can wait ‘till morning.”

He plopped down on the couch next to the two of them with a sigh of his own. Mabel picked up the remote, turned on the TV, and curled up with a yawn.