Chapter Text
Introductions:
Summer break is a time for relaxing, sun tanning on the beach, feet in the sand and the salt water lapping at your heels.
For Dipper Pines, that's asking too much of the universe. Prone as a flame at attracting metaphorical and supernatural moths, (at a rate you wouldn't believe!)it takes more luck for him to have a normal day than one has finding the end of the rainbow. Right now, riding in a rental motor boat unconscious, battered and bruised, one could almost believe it. The one currently steering the excuse for a boat is his twin sister, Mabel.
Their odds today looking a lot worse than usual. Stranded in a broken down, and gradually-though no less alarmingly- sinking motor boat with no land in sight, their future looks less than bright. Add the fact that a creature of unfathomable horror is hot on their heels and rising too fast from the depths of the great blue, and their chances of surviving this are officially screwed.
It was supposed to be such a relaxing summer- as relaxing a trip to some great Uncle they'd never heard of in a sleepy fishing town in the middle of nowhere- could be. Their parents only said they could use some fresh, salty air. Dipper thought the air was suffocating and scratchy. Noting good could come of it.
His sister tended to remain optimistic through all the trials of their temporary living situation, but Dipper was having a harder time getting used to their new surroundings. It probably had to do with the fact that Mabel's bed wasn't located directly below the one hole in the entire ceiling , and then not having to sleep under the down pour (because apparently it rained nightly), or that she didn't have an angry seagull roosting on the sill on her side of the room.
And then there was their Great Uncle Stan.
Stan had -in some fit of whimsy, some flight of fantasy- transformed his house by the docks into a tourist trap he called "The Mystery Shack." The real mystery in Dipper's opinion was why anyone bother to come. Mabel didn't get his sense of humor and he swore up and down that he could still feel the bruise on his arm...
Ironically enough, the second "t" on the home made sign was lying submerged in a puddle in the front yard. The place spelled out misery alright. Of broken dreams and tourist dumb enough to empty their wallets for the slightest bit of the mythical in their lives. He didn't know how his Grunkle did it, or even how he managed to get the kids to "earn their keep".
It was starting to feel like he only agreed to have them over was the free labor for his delightful would-have-been shop of horrors. Dipper was the only one that bothered questioning how illegal that probably was.
He really should have kept his head down, tried to get though the boredom somehow... Maybe everything would have been okay.