There was another flash of lighting that blinded the three kids, forcing them to shield their eyes from the incoming rays of bright light that filled the room. When the shadows on the walls returned, the kids opened their eyes and immediately turned back to the window, startled to see that the blood red writing had vanished and left no remnants to prove it had ever been there. It was gone without a trace.
"You guys saw that too, right?" Dipper asked while he forcefully stared at the window, refusing to blink with the fear that the terrifying message would appear again if he dared to look away for even a fraction of a second.
"Saw what?" Mabel asked innocently from behind Dipper. The boy closed his eyes and innocently turned around. Once Dipper Pines opened his eyelids he was immediately taken aback from the change in scenery. Dipper fell backwards off the stone steps and landed on the hard, cracked asphalt of the Gravity Falls Psychiatric Hospital parking lot. "Dipper are you okay?" Mabel and Wendy asked worriedly, in unison, as they rushed down the steps to help the ailing child stand up.
"I told you he'd be scared." Robbie said nonchalantly, leaning on the metal front door of the asylum. There was a smug look on his face as he smirked towards a bewildered Dipper.
"Come on, he can't be scared. Remember, this is the kid that beat up two ghosts with his own hands." Nate said, turning to Lee and punching him playfully in the gut.
Lee smiled and rubbed his stomach. "Yeah, I didn't see you do anything to help that night." He threw in, punching Nate back and then giving him a high-five before going over to check up on a staggering Dipper.
Ignoring the teenagers' petty argument among themselves about who helped out more that night, Dipper sat up with the help of Wendy and Mabel and rubbed the top of his head. "I... I thought we were just at the shack."
Wendy raised a brow and took a step back. "We left over an hour ago Dipper."
Mabel slapped Dipper's back and began to laugh awkwardly. "Good one bro." She said, wiping a tear from her eye.
Dipper put a hand over his right eye and pressed on the covered area. A pounding headache was attacking the child with the force of a hammer pounding inside of his skull. Dipper clenched his teeth and flashed a quick smile. "Yeah, it was a joke." He said, pushing through the pain his head was causing him.
Wendy stared at Dipper cautiously before giving him a modest shrug. "Well, as long as you're okay." She trailed off.
"Finally!" Robbie huffed apathetically. "Now can we go in or what?" Robbie kicked the large steel door and watched with widened eyes as it creaked open slowly, giving the abandoned building an even more ominous feel than it had a few seconds ago.
"Woah." Nate and Lee oddly said in unison after watching the door open at a snail's pace. Nate then joyfully pushed his best friend out of the way and began to rush inside. "Dibs on taking a selfie with the dead body." He called out as he aimlessly hurried into the asylum. Lee smiled and rushed inside after Nate, leaving Wendy, Robbie, Mabel and Dipper outside on the cobblestone steps.
"You two go on inside." Dipper instructed, grabbing gently onto his sister's arm. "I need to talk to Mabel for a second." Mabel turned to her brother and looked at him with worried eyes. It was now clear to her that something was severely wrong and it began to upset her, to the point where she was noticeably rocking up and down on her heels.
Robbie simpered a small smile and began to walk inside. "I told you he was scared." He said cockily to Wendy before he left from their view.
Wendy appeared to be saddened and began to frown. "You're not going to bail on me now Dipper, are you?"
"No. I'll be there in a minute." Dipper smiled childishly. "I promise." He said, holding out his pinky finger for Wendy to latch onto. Wendy smiled whole heatedly and gripped onto Dipper's smallest finger with her own. She then patted Dipper's hat silently before rushing up the steps to catch up to her friends.
Mabel watched as Dipper's expression quickly changed from happy to concerned after Wendy walked through the open steel door. She grabbed onto his shoulders and turned his body so that it was facing hers. "Dipper, what's wrong?" She whispered cautiously.
Dipper Pines glanced up at the six story mad-house and shivered. The lone barred window at the top of a drum tower in the closest corner seemed to be flashing with a bright green light, and with each momentary radiating glow Dipper could see an image forming in the glass. This spectral was that of a bone white skeleton with big round glasses hovering inches in front of its empty eye sockets. Perhaps, what was most noticeable about this set of bones was the Polaroid camera hanging around its vertebrae. A flash of red light caused the image to disappear but not before sending a jolt of pain up Dipper's spine, making the kid to collapse to the ground in agony.
Mabel bent down quickly to help her brother to his feet. "Dipper, you're starting to scare me." She said frantically as the pain subsided from the twelve year old's scrawny body.
Dipper could feel his vest vibrating as he quickly reached in and exposed a shaking book to the warm air around the twins. The book had a dark green luminescence surrounding the cover, not to mention the binding was eerily cold to the touch. Dipper chucked the journal towards the door in fear and knelt onto the cracked pavement as his knees became weak. Mabel bent down and hugged her brother tightly. "Dipper, please tell me what's going on." She pleaded desperately.
"You have to tell me exactly what happened after Wendy told us the story of the missing reporter." He choked, fear coarsing through every syllable the young kid pronounced.
Mabel rushed through her thoughts, trying to remember what had happened nearly 24 hours ago. "Well, after Wendy finished the story we saw the writing on the window, then it disappeared."
Dipper nodded, his mind trying to keep pace with Mabel's fast and soft-spoken words. "That's the last thing I remember."
Mabel continued. "We all sat there quietly until Grunkle Stan called us down for dinner. Nobody said a word the rest of the night and we all went to bed. Then, I woke up and saw that you were reading the journal. When I asked what you were reading about and you kinda just mumbled back. So I left you alone until Wendy came back over to pick us up."
"That's it?" Dipper asked, his muscle strength slowly returning to him as he attempted to stand upright. "No weird paranormal things?" Mabel shook her head from side to side, causing her long hair to wrap around to the front of her orange sweater. She brushed her brown hair aside and primped the soft fabric so that no visible wrinkles were around the sown-on image of a white dove. "I... I don't understand." Dipper stuttered. "Why can't I remember anything that happened?"
"Maybe it's the journal?" Mabel aimlessly suggested. She peered up the steps and stared at the motionless journal that was sitting next to the open steel door.
Dipper took off his hat and rubbed the top of his head. "Maybe. But I'm starting to think going inside this place is a bad idea." He said, putting his blue and white pine tree hat back atop his brown hair.
Mabel grabbed onto Dipper's hand and held it tightly. "I'm kind of scared too. But as long as we're together nothing bad can happen, right?"
Dipper smiled back at his sister and, for the first time, found himself studying his surroundings. To his right, behind Mabel, were the woods of Gravity Falls which he had become accustomed to seeing from outside of the shack. The forest most likely wrapped around the back of the Psychiatric Hospital since the littering of tall trees continued on the left side of the concrete building. Behind them was a large parking lot, full of cracks with grass and moss seeping out. Then there was a small plot of land full of uncut grass that would go up to the twins' waists if they were to walk through it. The sign by the two lane road looked the same as it did yesterday. It was still covered in long green vines on both sides, and some of the letters had rusted off, exposing a fresher, unweathered, concrete base where they used to hang.
"I wouldn't allow it." Dipper confidently said back to his sister. "Besides, we can't be in there for that long, right? These guys will get bored or scared quicker than last time." He laughed. Mabel joined in and found herself walking up the broken cobblestone steps with Dipper, towards the steel door that was beckoning them to enter the asylum.
Dipper looked up at the building. The entire outside seemed to be a bland concrete wall, like that of a castle's. However, with no windows, it made it seem like more of a prison, minus the guards and the barbed wire. The sky was cloudy, with little glimmers of sunshine poking its way through the puffy gray pillows overhead. The warm damp air from the overnight rain filled the twins' lungs as they stepped close to the steel door guarding the Gravity Falls Psychiatric Hospital. Dipper peered down at the book and was ready to bend down to pick it up when Mabel beat him to the punch and took it for herself. "Let me take this one bro." She said with a cautious smile.
"Are you sure?" Dipper said, reaching into his pocket and feeling around carefully.
"Yeah." Mabel nodded and started to skip through the dark entryway, that looked like a pitch black portal to another dimension. "See you inside." She called out as she happily hopped inside.
Dipper stopped feeling around his pocket once his sister was out of view and pulled out something that numbed his fingertips with coldness. Dipper examined the object in his hands and let out a heavy sigh. Dipper closed his eyes and stuck the inhaler back into his pocket. The fact that he had brought it relieved a lot of the stress weighing on Dipper's shoulders. The twelve year old boy attempted to put on his best smile while his head lightly thumped to the beat of an invisible drum. Dipper walked closer to the darkness, making it seem like the emptiness was engulfing him with each step he took, until, he heard a dark and menacing laugh, and the steel door to the asylum slammed shut behind him.
A/N: Sorry for the unusually long delay for an update guys. I had a pretty bad case of writer's block. Anyways, I've been cured and updates will start flowing again. Make sure to fave, follow, and review!