I got the immediate, disconcerting sense that I was not alone. I, however, appeared to be alone, in a vast expanse of white nothingness.

"Oh, you're not alone sweetheart," I heard a voice say from behind me. I immediately got the sense that I knew this voice like I knew my own body, but at the same time it was so alien and foreign, and I knew I was hearing it for the first time.

I turned around. Behind me there was a…. Wait what the heck? He appeared to be a yellow triangle of sorts, with a top hat and bow tie. He had one eye, and was reclining on a comfy looking chair. He looked like the Eye of Providence from the one dollar bill.

"The name's Bill," he said. "Bill Cipher. And you, Jimbo- can I call you that? Ah, what the heck, I'm calling you that. You, Jimbo, have piqued my interest."

"What, why?" I asked.

"Here kiddo, have a seat!" Bill said, and a chair appeared underneath me.

I sat down. "Why have I piqued your interest?" I asked.

"You're not a normal kid, Jimbo. You can do things other kids can't, you know that right?"

"I'm a normal eighteen year old," I said, shrugging.

"Oh yeah? Were you normal when you encountered that creature in the forest?" Bill countered, shaking a finger at me.

I thought back on it. I didn't remember anything after getting the sense that the creature was in the clearing. The next thing I remember was running through the woods behind Grunkle Ford and Dipper.

He laughed, an annoying sound like a demonic Spongebob. Not nearly as irritating though, which was good. "Yeah, that's it, now you're remembering, Jimbo. Or should I say, not remembering?" He hopped out of the chair and floated around my head. "Y'know, kiddo, you and I have a lot more in common than you think."

"I don't know you that well, and I don't think you know me," I retorted.

"Of course I know you! You're Jamie Birch, best friend of Dipper and Mabel Pines! And I know the Pines family very very well, you see. We go way back; old friends y'know," Bill explained. "The longer you stay in this messed up town, the more you'll discover who you really are. Don't forget that, Birch Tree," he said, cackling and fading from view.

I awoke with a start, and sat bolt upright in my bed in the spare room downstairs. I shuddered. That was a horrible dream, and I didn't want to be alone in this room anymore. I looked out the window to check if it was still night and sure enough, it was.

"Ugh, shit," I muttered. I glanced over at the clock, and saw that it was 1:30 in the morning. Mother of God. I dragged my ass out of bed, taking my pillow and blanket with me. Tromping up the stairs, I made my way to the attic. I didn't even bother to knock in the twins' door, I knew they were asleep. It wasn't a guess. Somehow I just knew they were.

I opened the door and closed it behind me quietly, then I set up my pillow and blanket on their floor, and promptly fell back asleep.

I woke up before the sun, which wasn't unusual for me. Both the twins were still asleep, so I decided to leave the room, as to not wake them. I took my pillow and blanket with me, and went downstairs to make breakfast.

I tied my blanket around my shoulders like a fuzzy cape, and set on making waffles. Ever since culinary class in high school, I had an internalized recipe book, which really came in handy. A lot.

The sun began to stretch its golden fingers over the mountains to the east, and the warm morning light streamed through the cool morning forest. The sunlight lit up my back as I put on a pot of coffee, and I smiled. This was nice.

"Good morning, Jamie," I heard Mabel's usually cheerful voice, now heavy with sleep, say.

"Good morning, Mabes, would you like some coffee?" I asked.

"You bet," she said, and I poured her a mug. She sat down at the table and began to drink it. I joined her as one of the waffles cooked. The timer would go off when it was done cooking. We sipped on coffee and sat in comfortable silence.

"So," I began, breaking the silence after a while. "What's the order of people waking up, usually?" I took a long sip of coffee.

"Usually I get up first at around 5:30 to 6:00," Mabel said, getting up to add creamer to her coffee. She sat back down and added sugar as well. "Then Grunkle Ford about 6:00 to 6:30. Grunkle Stan is almost always awake between 7:00 and 8:00, but it can take until noon to drag Dipper out of bed," she explained.

"Seriously?" I laughed. "He sleeps until noon?"

She shrugged. "He stays up until like 3:00 doing stupid nerd stuff, like working on that new set of journals with Grunkle Ford.

"What do you mean, 'new' set of journals?" I asked, wrapping my blanket cape about my shoulders tighter.

"The original three got destroyed when Dipper and I were twelve," she explained. "When summer was over and Dipper and I had to go back home to Piedmont, our Grunkles went sailing the world in search of new mysteries, and made a new set of journals. They left the management of the shack to Soos, but they were back and running it again after a year and a half," she explained. "They came back for summer, because we came back, but left again when we home."

I nodded. "So that's the work your brother has been going on about. Hes recreating the journals with Grunkle Ford."

She nodded. "What about you? What are your parents doing this summer?"

"Well… it's just my mom and I, y'know," I said.

"Oh right," she said. "I'm sorry, I can't believe that slipped my mind."

"It's fine," I said. "My mother was going on a business trip to somewhere in Colorado, and I needed a place to go," I explained. "I don't know if Dipper had fully explained the situation to you or not."

Mabel shook her head. "Not really. Well, he might've. Sometimes I do tune him out, I'll admit," she chuckled.

I chuckled along with her. It was true, Dipper could be long winded; asking him for advice or for an explanation of something was going to get you a fifteen minute lecture or longer. He did not keep things short and sweet.

"Good morning," I heard Grunkle Ford say, coming up from the basement.

"I made coffee," I said, gesturing with my head.

"Good morning, Grunkle Ford!" exclaimed Mabel. "You're up a little earlier than usual," she remarked after a moment.

Grunkle Ford shrugged, and poured himself a cup of coffee. He adjusted his glasses and took a sip. "I had a nightmare," he said. "I couldn't fall back asleep afterwards so I figured I'd just get up."

"You too, huh?" I asked, giving him a curious look. I wondered if the triangle thing had shown up in his dream too. I didn't ask him about it though, because I was so thoroughly disturbed by my dream that I didn't really want to think about it.

He nodded. "That… that thing last night really put me on edge."

"What thing?" asked Mabel. "What did you guys see? When I asked Dipper about it, he just sort of turned pale and mumbled something incoherently."

I noticed the first journal, the one that Ford had drawn in, was lying on the table. I flipped it open to the page with the entry about the demon we had seen last night. "That," I said, sliding the book towards Mabel. "That is what we saw last night."

Her eyes grew wide and she looked up at me. "Holy shit," she said. "Did it say anything?"

I shrugged. "I don't remember," I said. "I blacked out."

"He told us to leave," said Ford. "And that's what we did."

"You didn't have any nightmares last night, did you?" I asked Dipper, as we went walking through the woods, looking for pegasi hoof prints.

"Not more than the usual," Dipper replied, looking behind a fallen tree. "No luck over here, let's keep looking." After a moment he asked, "Why do you ask?"

"Ford and I both had… wait a minute, what do you mean 'not more than the usual'? Do you have nightmares every night?" I asked, stopping dead in my tracks.

He turned around to look at me, shrugging. "Not every night, but most nights, yeah. I've had frequent nightmares ever since I was twelve."

"What!?"

"Yeah, ever since I came here," he said. "There's something about this town."

Oh, so he was being a conspiracy theorist. "Ooo, Illuminati confirmed," I joked, holding my fingers in a triangle over my right eye.

Dipper let out a yelp and dropped Journal 1, scrambling backwards. He tripped over a root and landed on his ass, where he sat, chest heaving. "Please, don't do that again," he said, hiding his eyes under the brim of his hat. "Please."

"Relax man, it was a joke," I said, crouching down to where he was sitting on the ground and reaching out to rest my hand on his upper arm.

He yanked his arm away as if he'd been burned. "Sorry," he said, after he realized he'd pulled his arm away. "Sorry. I know. I know you meant well."

"Who… who hurt you?" I asked, resting my hand over his. This time, he didn't pull away.

"That… that's a long story," he said, still refusing to meet my eyes.

"I got all day," I said, not unkindly.

So he told me everything, and I believed every word of it. However, I didn't tell him I knew Bill. I didn't need him to freak out again.

"So when I put my fingers over my eye…" I began, but trailed off.

"It reminded me of Bill," he said, finishing my sentence.

"Have you ever considered going to a therapist?" I asked gently. He could certainly benefit from one, there was no doubt about that.

"Therapist?" laughed Dipper, in a mirthless way, the sort of way that gave you a sick, hopeless feeling. "I can't go to a damn therapist. Trust me, I'd get put on meds that would make me forget my own name. I know I need one though. God, God do I know I need one." He wouldn't look at me. Rather, he stared straight ahead into the dark woods, eyes reflecting the light from the flashlight. "It's just, how do you tell a therapist that the reason you're a seventeen year old with night terrors is because you were tortured by a demon at the age of twelve? That you've fought monsters that grown men run from? That you hear laughing every night, and it haunts you in the worst way possible? And that, despite all of that, you know for certain that you're perfectly sane. You're perfectly sane and it's that reality that scares you the most."

I didn't say anything. How could I? How do you respond to something like that? You can't. Instead, I reached over and laced my fingers through his, hoping he wouldn't mind. He gave my hand a gentle squeeze, and slumped against me, letting out a shuddering sigh.

I didn't need to worry him with news that I had seen Bill in my dream; it probably didn't mean anything. So I didn't tell him.