Welcome Back, Cipher

(June 15, 2016)

11: Don't Know Where

Everything happened so fast that afterward, Dipper wasn't ever really sure he got the sequence completely straightened out. He hurried right behind Stanford, who went tearing into the den, his face purple with anger, his six-fingered hands clenched tight into fists.

Only one person was in the den. Dipper saw Billy, sitting perched on a cushion he'd piled onto the piano bench so he could reach the keys, carefully playing the last bit of the verse, the one that ends with the words sunny day. Though he was picking out the notes slowly and deliberately, they sounded true and in tune. Billy looked around with a smile—not a hateful, evil smile, Dipper thought, but a kid's smile, a happy look-what-I-can-do smile.

Which changed to a gape of fear when an angry Ford bellowed, "Stop that at once!"

Dipper started to say, "Billy, it's not—" He didn't get past the Bi part, because with no apparent preparation, with no warning whatever, Billy leaped off the piano bench and raced past them and into the dining room. "Stop him!" Ford said, swiping his arm as he tried to grab Billy's shirt, missing it by three inches.

Billy weaved among the still-milling guests in the dining room. The sliding doors to the deck stood open, and Billy darted out. At the same moment, Soos was heading in from the deck, carrying a big plate of ribs, probably his third or fourth. "Little dude!" he called, stopping where he was and blocking the doorway, "Be careful on the steps! It's, like, getting real dark out!"

What happened next Dipper heard more than saw: the clatter of Billy's footfalls on the wooden steps. Then came a ridiculous waltz between Ford and Soos, Soos trying his best to step out of the way, Ford inadvertently stepping the same way to get around him, Soos getting flustered, Ford growling in frustration. Dipper dived out through an opening behind Soos and thundered down the steps. "Billy! It's me! Wait, it's OK!"

Heavy dusk had settled. He couldn't see Billy anywhere. Teek and Mabel, just identifiable in the gloom, were sitting at the picnic table near the grill, and Mabel yelled, "What's wrong?"

"Tell Mom and Dad that Billy wants to have a sleepover with us!" Dipper called back. "I'll call you with details!"

Ford came down the steps, huffing. "Where is he?" he asked, taking a pistol-like device from inside his jacket. Someone came down the steps more slowly, but Dipper couldn't see who.

"Don't shoot him!" Dipper said, grabbing his great-uncle's arm. "I think that was an accident, his playing that song!" Ford had told him about the bizarre moment when Bill Cipher had appeared on the top floor of the Fearamid, accompanying his high-pitched singing on a piano. It had been that song, and ever since that day, Ford couldn't stand to hear it.

In the darkness, Ford replaced his weapon in its shoulder holster. "We must find him, anyway," he muttered. Then he lowered his head. "I would only stun, Dipper, not shoot to kill. I thought you knew me better."

"He's scared," Dipper said. "He ran away somewhere—I don't know where."

"I think maybe we can help y'all," Gideon said, coming up behind him. "Ulva can follow him."

"I didn't even know she was here!" Dipper said.

Someone inside, most likely Soos, finally thought to switch on the deck and stair floodlights. Now the former kid psychic and his werewolf girlfriend stood backlighted. Ulva clung to Gideon's arm. Gideon patted her hand. "Yeah, she kinda stayed in other rooms away from Billy. She's a wee bit afraid of him."

"Smells wrong," Ulva said in a trembling voice.

"Evil?" Ford asked sharply. "You sense that he's evil?"

Ulva seemed to shrink away from his intensity. "Not—not exactly evil. But not—I do not know the human word. Not—" she warbled like a wolf warming up to howl. "Not-of-our-kin. Not wolf. Not human, either. Wrong somehow."

"Alien," Dipper murmured.

Ignoring that, Ford asked, "Can you follow his scent?"

Ulva gulped hard. "Yes. Think I can."

"We'll go 'long with y'all," Gideon said. "Help you find him." He seemed to be straining to sound casual, but missed the mark. His voice had tightened, the pitch rising as though he were still the ten-year-old con artist.

"No, you not go," Ulva said softly, trying to pull away from him. "Danger, maybe, and I strong smell fear on you. You stay here, safe."

"Ulva," Gideon said, refusing to let go of her, "I reckon you're right—I'm mighty scared. But mostly scared for you. Sometimes, when you're most scared of doin' somethin', you just gotta do it anyhow. You'll understand someday. It's a human thing."

"Good man," Dipper said.

But Ford drowned out the remark: "Let's not waste time!"

Ulva didn't change to wolf form, but she threw her head back and inhaled deeply. Then, like an excited puppy on a leash, she dragged Gideon by the hand as she hurried to the side of the yard. "That way. Up the hill."

Billy must have run up the slope, through the thicket of young pines, toward Stan's house. There he had taken a straight course, right across Stan's front yard, to the emerging footpath that led up to the yard of the Mystery Shack. Again they climbed a hill.

It was tough going—the pine boughs kept slapping them in the face. And at the top, as they first stepped out in the Shack's yard, Ulva had to pause and concentrate—though Dipper could not smell it, she said the odor of pigs distracted her. Slowly, the group circled the Shack and then she sniffed and said, "This way." Billy must have passed the pig sty and then cut right across, in front of the Museum porch, to the end of the parking lot. His trail turned right.

Which led down the Mystery Trail.

"Watch out for the Bottomless Pit," Dipper said to the others. "I'm gonna run inside for a couple of flashlights, Grunkle Ford. Soos keeps them in the gift shop in case of power failures."

"Hurry."

Dipper ran as fast as he'd ever sprinted and grabbed two long, solid flashlights, the kind that held four D-cell batteries each, one from under the check-out counter, the other from a shelf in the employees' locker room. He cut through the Museum and out that door and turned on one of the flashlights.

It threw a bright, clear beam—trust Soos, the handyman, to keep the batteries fresh—and Dipper followed it past the Bottomless Pit. The others were already halfway to the bonfire clearing. He heard a car braking behind him, in the Mystery Shack lot, but didn't even look back.

Then a few seconds later, he heard someone running, and from behind him, he heard, "Dipper! Wait up!"

"Come on, Wendy!" Dipper yelled over his shoulder. "Billy ran away. Ulva's following him!"

Wendy ran on her long legs, and the two of them easily caught up to Ford, Gideon, and Ulva. "Fear in his scent too," Ulva said. "Like wolf with hunter close on his trail. Afraid of being caught."

Ford took one of the flashlights. Dipper tried to give the other one to Wendy, but she said, "Need both hands, dude."

Oh, right. For her axe. "Gideon, here, you take it," Dipper said. "When we find him, I may be the only one he'll trust. I don't want to have anything on me that he could mistake for a weapon."

The forest scents, squirrels, deer, Gnomes, even a badger, were clouding the trail, and Ulva frequently had to stoop close to the earth to pick it up again. "Not running fast now," she said. "Hurrying though. Like fast walk. He fell here, tripped on root, I think. No blood." Then she faulted, circling. "He left the path here. Which way, which way?"

"Dudes," Wendy said, "look over to the left—showing up above the trees. Is that a light?"

Dipper felt his heart beating harder. He could see a misty glow in the air, very faint and soft, yellow but not the yellow of a campfire's aura.

It was more the color of gold.

And he thought he knew exactly where it came from.

"Hurry!" he said.