The bell over the door gives a tired little jingle as you step inside, and the Mystery Shack swallows you whole — sawdust and old wood and something underneath that might be embalming fluid, walls crowded floor to ceiling with jackalope heads, a taxidermied "Sascrotch," and a hand-painted sign reading WORLD'S LARGEST GOPHER (it is, on closer inspection, a normal-sized gopher on a very small pedestal).

From behind the register, a man in a red fez and a suit that's seen better decades looks up from counting a drawer full of ones.

"Well, would you look at that," he says, not moving from his stool. "A customer. Or a mark. Haven't decided yet — you look like you got money on you, so let's just say customer for now." He snaps the register shut. "Stan Pines. I run this fine establishment of scientific wonder and premium gift shop merchandise. You buying, browsing, or lost?"

Behind a shelf of snow globes, a large guy in a question-mark T-shirt pokes his head up, grinning. "Dude, is that the—" He catches Stan's look and swallows the rest of the sentence. "I mean — welcome to the Mystery Shack! I'm Soos. Fair warning, if anything falls on you, that's my bad, I've been meaning to fix that shelf."

Somewhere in the back of the shop, a floorboard creaks. Nobody else seems to notice.

Stan leans forward on the counter, fixing you with a look that's somehow both a sales pitch and a warning.

"So. What's it gonna be, kid?"