First things first: sorry for the gap between chapters. I dropped out of the Transcendence AU fandom, and this update doesn't mean I'm back! I just wanted to save y'all from this evil, and cross a WIP off my list.
If you wanna see me writing about demon sacrifices and stuff like that, check out my AO3, AvaTaggart, where I've got some Bendy and the Ink Machine fics going! All new works will be posted exclusively to AO3, though if I work on a WIP posted here on FFN I'll update it here as well.
Anyway, hope this is worth the wait!
Willow had always remembered her dreams perfectly. The details, the words, the settings—some people lost everything but the gist of their dreams when they woke up, but not Willow.
So when she woke up from the third night in a row with the remnants of her dream just barely on the edge of her mind, already melting away like snowflakes in the palm of her too-hot hands, she knew something was very, very wrong.
She could remember color, even though she usually dreamed in grayscale; flashes of yellow? No, golden stars. And there had been someone there, a man that seemed so familiar in her dreams even though she knew she hadn't met him in person.
Willow was no stranger to things outside of the ordinary, having the Sight and all, but she had no idea what this was.
On the bright side, she did live just above one of the world's most comprehensive libraries of the supernatural. She ought to spend some time reading, figure out what was happening to her dreams.
And the sooner, the better. Last night's dream, though she couldn't remember the details, left an ominous feeling that lingered even after Willow woke up.
The library, for the first time Willow could remember, had nothing helpful.
She'd scoured the section on dreams twice over, then gone to her dad for help finding all the books that might be related. The closest she'd gotten to anything helpful was a book on demons with powers over the mind, but none of the demons listed seemed to have the power or scope of influence to do something like change her dreams, or make her forget them. And there were blank pages throughout, so Willow wasn't sure she trusted what information there was in the book, if the copy editors didn't catch a total of forty-seven totally blank pages.
Her mom made her a dream journal, so she could try remembering her dreams better, and a dreamcatcher with a half-dozen enchantments on it, to keep any nasties away. Willow was thankful, but she also doubted they would help. Nothing strong enough to erase her memories was weak enough to be caught in a dreamcatcher, even one so heavily enchanted, and she was certain there was a supernatural force behind it.
Acacia offered to stay up and watch Willow sleep, to see if she could see whatever it was come in, and scare it off with the brass knuckles G-Grunkle Stan had given her and the triplets' last birthday, but she didn't see anything out of the ordinary happen. Hank had asked around at school, in case anyone else had heard of something similar, but came up empty-handed.
Willow was on her own for this. She'd just have to figure out what these missing dreams, and the strangely familiar man that seemed to appear in all of them, meant for herself.
She used the dream journal to write down the details she managed to recall in the moments after she woke up, catching them on paper to look after them later. For the first few days, it was all small things: the man in the dreams had brown hair, the two of them were somewhere grey, he said the word 'Fighter'.
After she caught one word, it seemed she'd get one or two every night. On their own, they were nonsense, but together, they spelled out a clear message:
THE
NEW
MAN IN
TOWN
IS
BAD
TRICKY
EVIL
TALK TO
HIM
SCARE HIM
AND
FREE
ME
Downright ominous, Willow thought. Whoever was in her dreams was trapped, and could only speak to her through dreams. At least, that's what it seemed like, and Willow could feel his desperation in her dreams, could see it in all its teal-magenta-tangerine vividness. Even if Willow couldn't free him, he thought she could, and he wouldn't leave her alone until she tried.
She knew who the new man in town was, had seen him at the supermarket before—a lot, actually. He'd once helped her mom get something off the top shelf. He'd been into the library before, too. He was in his early forties, she figured, his light brown hair showing streaks of grey. He didn't seem like the sort of person to be evil.
But then again, truly evil people never seemed it.
The least she could do would be to check the dream-man's accusations out, to see if the new man in town was up to anything nefarious. But this was where she stopped doing things on her own. No, if she was going to be confronting a potentially dangerous stranger, there was no way she was going alone, and she knew just the people for the job.
Maybe Acacia would get to put those brass knuckles to use after all.
The triplets showed up at the new man in town's house early Saturday morning. Hank had been able to find the man's address, and his name, and Willow didn't know how other people managed to get things done without siblings willing to help.
The man's name was Jeffrey Rise, and he'd moved to town a few months ago for no apparent reason. He had no family in town, no job, and rarely socialized or went into town to do more than buy groceries. If he was really just a shut-in, that would be fine, but given that he was a shut-in that had been visiting the Stanley Pines Memorial Library of the Supernatural, the possibility that he was doing something sinister was frighteningly high.
The three of them had come prepared for a fight: Acacia with her brass knuckles, Hank with their mom's bat hidden in a poster tube, and Willow with a flask of holy water and a few other things that Aunt Wendy had left behind at the house when she visited a month ago.
Willow just hoped it would be enough to free the man who had told her to come.
She steadfastly ignored the way her hand was shaking a little as she reached out and pressed the doorbell.
There was shuffling behind the door, and a very confused-looking Mr. Rise opened the door a moment after. Willow got the deepest reading she could of his emotions without making it obvious she was staring: there was confusion, yes, but also hostility, and the tiniest bit of worry so strong it was more like bone-chilling fear.
No doubt about it, something well out of the ordinary and most likely sinister was going on here.
"Hello?" Mr. Rise said, making it more of a question. "What do you kids want?"
"Hello sir, my name's Hank, and these are my sisters Acacia and Willow. We've got a school project to get to know someone in the community that we don't know well. Would it be ok if we asked a few questions?" Hank said, holding out a sheet of paper he'd printed up that morning with a few innocent questions on it. Mr. Rise took a second to read over the paper before he pushed the door open further.
"Seems okay to me," he said. "Might as well come in instead of doing this on the doorstep."
"Thank you, sir," Acacia said, and the triplets filed into the house. The man's worry seemed to have died down, and though he was a bit irritated, he didn't seem to be suspicious of the triplets any longer.
Hank started right in on asking questions, favorite color and such, and Willow alternated between watching the man's emotions and looking around the room for anything suspicious. Acacia, behind the man, was scouring a bookshelf, occasionally pulling out a certain book with incredible silence and showing it to Willow—the man had supernatural texts that even the library didn't have, on demons and rituals Willow was entirely unfamiliar with. If anyone could bind someone to another person's dreams, Mr. Rise seemed a likely fit.
Willow found herself turning her attention entirely to Mr. Rise as Hank got into some of the harder questions they came up with, some things about where he lived before and why he came to Gravity Falls. His answers came easily enough, that he was a writer working on a book about the Transcendence and came here for research, but Willow could tell he was lying. What's more, he was beginning to panic; he did a fantastic job acting stoic and unbothered, but his aura gave him away.
Acacia gave Willow a thumbs-up, signaling that she hadn't found any supernatural weapons or traps in the room, and Hank was coming to the end of his questions. It was time to move on to the second phase of the plan. Willow nodded to her sister, who caught Hank's eye and signaled him to stop asking his questions.
"You have an awful lot of practical and applied ritual books for someone merely writing about the supernatural," Acacia said.
"Yes, well, I want to make my books as authentic as possible," Mr. Rise said, nerves edging into his tone.
"I'm pretty sure 'True Names and Other High-Intensity Demonic Bindings' didn't have much to do with the Transcendence," Acacia said, holding up the mentioned tome. "People only really started figuring out how demons worked a few years after, y'know?"
"Yes, but demons still followed those rules at the time of the Transcendence—most of them, anyways," he said, muttering the last bit.
"Mr. Rise, you wouldn't happen to be putting any of these books to practical use, would you?" Willow asked, hand on Aunt Wendy's taser in her bookbag.
"Of course not!" Mr. Rise cried.
"He's lying," Willow confirmed for her siblings, who pulled out their own weapons as Willow brandished the taser.
"W-what do you kids think you're doing?" Mr. Rise cried, fumbling in the couch cushions before his face suddenly went pale, fear spiking out of nowhere. Willow stepped forward, deciding to capitalize on it.
"I have it on good authority you're keeping someone trapped," Willow said. "So you have two choices. Set him free, or things are gonna get ugly."
Mr. Rise scowled.
"You're children. You really think the three of you stand a chance against me? You should get out of here before either of us does something we regret."
His tone was absolutely terrifying, but Willow could see the worry in his aura, how he hoped they'd take the bluff. For whatever reason, he couldn't hurt them. Willow nodded at Acacia, who leveled a brutal punch at Mr. Rise's stomach that left him doubled over and out of breath. Hank activated the charm on their mom's bat that made the hidden spikes appear, and held it a few inches from Mr. Rise's face, the threat clear: brass knuckles were the least they had to offer.
Mr. Rise chuckled darkly.
"You really want me to 'free' the person you think I'm trapping? I'm keeping him contained to reduce the amount of damage he does, the number of lives he claims and souls he eats," Mr. Rise says. "I can free him, if you want it so desperately, but I doubt any of us in the room, maybe anyone in the whole town, will survive."
The threat is terrifying, and Willow can see Hank lower the bat slightly, and Acacia looks towards her, questioning whether they should go forward.
But this is a bluff. Willow can see it in the man's aura.
"Go ahead, then," she says. "Today's as good a day as any other to die, I think."
Mr. Rise, if that's even his real name, takes an hour to draw the summoning circle. It's like none Willow has seen before, and yet, it's strangely familiar in some kind of déjà vu way. She's sure he's taking longer than he needs to, but doesn't dare to jeopardize the creation of the circle just in case Mr. Rise is right about how dangerous the man—the demon—he's trapping is.
Finally, the circle is done, and Mr. Rise mutters a simple incantation in Latin. The circle flares to life, glowing with golden light so bright Willow's almost tempted to look away.
But she doesn't, and the light dies out in a flash, leaving a mostly-human looking man in the middle of the circle. Willow recognizes him as the man from her dreams, and it's almost impossible to tell he's a demon except for his eyes, glowing gold on infinite black.
He looks at her, and smiles, and oh, he's got sharp teeth, too. Rows and rows of them.
Willow is second-guessing freeing the man, but she has to give him a shot. She's come this far, she might as well see it through.
"Why were you in my dreams?" she asks, and the man's smile saddens.
"That's right, you still don't remember me," he says. "Trigger here-" he snarls at Mr. Rise, or is it Mr. Trigger? "-and his partner made me erase all trace of myself from the mortal plane. When he breaks the deal he's keeping me in, I'll make sure you remember everything, but to keep it short: I'm your parents' best friend, to put it lightly. Willow, I showed up in your dreams specifically because I saved your life twice before, and that tie meant you were the only one to remember my visits."
"Bold of you to assume I'll break our deal, demon," Trigger hissed. "We spent years working on that deal, and finding you true name. I won't let it all go to waste just because of a few threats!"
The man in the summoning circle looks away from Trigger, seemingly bored, and smirks at Willow.
"I think I know something that'll spook him," he says. "Come here, I'll tell you."
"No offense, but I definitely don't trust you enough to risk breaking the circle," Willow says.
"Smart girl," the man says. "I'll say it from here, then: light your hands on fire."
"What?!" Willow demands, Hank and Acacia joining in.
"Not, like, with gasoline and a match," the man clarifies. "Just… do it."
And under any other circumstances, Willow would walk away then and there, but there have been so many weird events leading up to this, and the magic energy in the room is restless, and he palms feel hotter than she can ever remember them feeling, and—
Willow's hands are ablaze with blue flames, crackling with heat and magic alike, and Trigger looks like his soul has just left his body.
"What is this? What the hell is this?" he demands, looking back and forth between Willow's hands and the circle, where the man is laughing.
And if the man, demon or not, knew something about Willow that not even she herself [knew] remembered, then she had to give him a chance.
In two quick strides, she was in Trigger's face, and grabbed the collar of his shirt, scorching it with heat as the flames dances inches from his eyes.
"Break the deal," she demanded.
"A-alright. Alright! Just please don't hurt me!" Trigger cried. "Alcor, I break my deals with you!"
There was a noise like a shattering chandelier from the circle, and a hand on Willow's shoulder. She turned and saw the man from the circle, golden tears building at the edges of his eyes.
The memories hit Willow's mind like a tidal wave, overwhelming and then settling down. The man that had been so thoroughly erased form their lives was her uncle, and she could remember him teaching her how to block out other people's auras, watching movies with them and flicking popcorn at the screen during the cheesy parts, saving her life…
"Thank you," he says, his voice so quiet she can barely hear it.
"Of course," she whispers back. "This is what family is for!"