When Ford was living in the shack alone, he came across a creature that towered over him with lanky limbs, protruding bones, and antlers coming out of its skull. He of course dedicated a page to it in his journal. He realized the creature was trying to communicate with him but he was never able to understand what it was trying to say. He then kept discovering other anomalies and moved on from it.
However, it would knock on his windows and door and be especially persistent when it was raining. It always followed Ford around whenever he was in the forest, indirectly chasing off other creatures. He got fed up with it keeping him awake at night so he set traps, nothing to hurt it but just to get it suck in a way that it can get out on its own so it stays away. And it works. Ford only ever saw it in the corner of his eye. Ford then meets Bill, builds the portal, realizes he made a mistake, Stan comes, Ford goes through the portal.
Stan has journal one which he can't fix the portal with on its own so he goes searching in the forest for the other journals. He can't find them. He breaks down and yells and sits in the middle of the forest and cries where no one can hear him. Or so he thinks.
He somehow hears rustling of leaves through his sobbing and he looks up from his hands and finds a beast towering over him. His breath catches in his throat and he tries to scramble away but he's too shaky from his breakdown.
The beast looks at him curiously before going down on all fours and showing its neck. That seems to calm Stan down. He thought that all the weird creatures in the journal were just some form of creative expression but he remembered seeing something like this.
Stan pulled the journal out and flipped through it eventually finding the page. He showed the creature, feeling silly for a second until it nodded and pointed to itself. The creature slowly reached towards Stan, closing the journal before pointing to the six fingered hand on the cover then to Stan's five fingered hand and making a confused trill.
“Ohhh buddy, you're not going to believe this.”
Turns out he did believe it.
Stan explained everything, the creature looked sad but not all too shocked. Stan asked if it was close to Ford. The creature made a pained grunt and showed him with leaves.
It took one red leaf and had it move around from leaf to leaf before stopping at a leaf with a pebble on it. The red leaf moved away from it but the leaf with the pebble followed. The creature made angry grunts and growls before leaving the leaf with the pebble behind again but the leaf with the pebble still followed, just out of sight.
“That makes two of us… Wait! So you know where the other journals are!”
The creature nodded.
“I need them to fix the portal. Can you show me where they are?”
The sun had set by the time Stan had all three journals in his possession. He rushed back to the cabin but stopped at the door, looking back at the creature standing just at the edge of the treeline.
“We’ll talk more tomorrow, I promise.”
The next day, Stan found him in the clearing behind the cabin. He brought along the three journals, books he thought might be relevant, and notebooks that were filled with Fords equations. He plopped it all on the ground and threw himself down along with it.
“Buddy, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm never going to get him out of there. I never even graduated highschool, how the hell am I supposed to understand all this?” Stan pushed the palms of his hands into his eyes till spots formed.
Stan listened to the papers rustling and figured there was no harm in letting the creature look. He then felt a tap on his shoulder. He pulled his hands from his eyes and looked up at him.
“What.”
The creature tapped his finger against the pages so Stan looked. He pointed to different topics in the textbook then to different equations and sections in the portal drawings.
“You saw him do all this?”
The creature shook his head. He pointed to himself, then to his head, then to the pages.
“You KNOW this stuff!”
He made a ‘so so’ hand gesture.
Stan's excitement slid off his face and was replaced with sadness.
“You weren't always like this, were you?”
The creature shook his head sadly.
“Is there a way I can cure you?”
The creature's eyes went wide before he nodded.
Stan pushed the pencil and paper towards the creature but he just shook his head. After some back and forth they figured out a communication method. It was slow, but worked. The creature would point to words in all the books and Stan would figure out what he was trying to say from that.
The cure was simple. Gnome spit, fairy dust, unicorn snot, and manotaur sweat. Mix together and wipe it on his forehead.
Yeah… Simple.
The gnomes were more than happy to give some spit if it meant getting the creature out of their forest. They also gave a discount on fairy dust for the price of one pb&j. Stan found the unicorns and started insulting the mane of the first one he saw, making it cry. He watched the Manotaurs for a while and his first plan was to challenge one to arm wrestle until he saw one snap a small tree like a twig. So he challenged them to stand on hot coals. Good thing they aren't well acclimated to humans and dont know that human feet don't look like Ford's temperature proof boots.
Stan hiked back down to the cabin and gathered all the ingredients together.
“You better be a cute human.” Stan groaned, glaring up at the beast most only have nightmares about currently sitting and grinning like a dog about to get a treat.
He smeared it across his forehead and nothing happened for a few seconds until he collapsed on the ground and started writhing in pain. Stan watched as his bones contorted and skin grew in places where there wasn't before, but where there was supposed to be.
He was turning human.
After an agonizing minute of Stan listening to the pained growls turn into groans and yells into words and pants, a human is left lying on the ground. He holds his hands in front of him and stares at them, smiling.
“Ugh, spit, snot, ‘n sweat? Really?!” The man wipes the mixture off his forehead. “Thank you Stanley.” He smiles up at him.
“Uh, yeah, ‘course.” Stan rubs the back of his neck. The two smile at each other for a little bit before the man startles out of it.
“Oh! I’m sure you have questions and now that I can talk, I’d be glad to answer them.”
“What about your name?”
“Oh good golly how could I forget. Fiddleford McGucket.”
“Well Fidds, how about you get settled and some real food in you that isn’t whatever you were eating out there, and then we can get to the questions.” Stan gestures to the cabin behind him.
“That would be nice.”
When they manage to get Ford out he asks Fiddleford who he is. He grabs the journal and opens to his page and explains the curse.
“Im surprised someone like Stanley could figure out how to communicate with you.”
“I opened the portal once to get you out, I could open it again to shove you back in, again. And I know how you treated Fidds when he was cursed, you were too stupid to see he was trying to talk to you.”
“I had more important things to work on. Besides, I would have gotten it eventually.”
“Ya barely even tried…”
~~~~~
LORE
Fiddleford told his wife he wanted a divorce and she conveniently has a witch friend that she got to place a curse on him. He wasn't able to make the cure himself or be there when the ingredients were collected. When he was cursed, he was told how to make the cure and its impossible for him to forget it. He was unable to talk or write. As for how he got to Gravity Falls… something something weirdness magnet- I don't know.