The Ceremony
"Any more clues in your Journal, bro-bro?" Mabel asked.
"There's another section, but it's in a symbol code I haven't figured out yet," said Dipper. "I hope I can crack it before my black light battery runs out of juice."
"May I see it?" asked Gideon. He looked it over and smiled. "There was a bunch of that code in Journal 2. I cracked it, memorized it and I can still read it as easy as English."
"Great, then please read it for us," said Dipper.
Gideon cleared his throat and read, "When my body is possessed and sent to the other dimension, my soul will remain here, invisible. I believe being in two parts will help with the Ceremony. My body will be the Six-Fingered Hand, while my soul represents the Glasses. I have practiced the art of overshadowing the soul of animals. Find the animal that I control and you will find me. I will mark it in a way that does it no serious harm."
"Does he mean Waddles?" asked Mabel. "He acts almost human, sometimes."
"I think it could be Gompers," said Dipper. "The tip of one of his horns is broken off. When I first found Journal 3 he was there, and he acted like he wanted it."
"There's a bit more," said Gideon. "Put my real glasses on the animal. Don't use the spare glasses from my room, because they're an artificial life form created by Him to spy on me."
"Good point," said Dipper.
Gideon continued, "Swap the demon out of my body with the Electron Carpet, and put in someone who helped create the journals. Put all things pertaining to the demon in the center of the circle."
"Someone who helped create the Journals?" asked Dipper. "Did you help, Grandpa Stan?"
"Not me," said Stan. "My brother usually didn't usually let anyone else write in them, but one time he and McGucket played a game of tic-tac-toe on a page."
"I don't recall that, but if you say so," said McGucket. "If you find the goat, you ain't gonna need me for the Glasses, so I can be in the body of the Six-Finger guy, I reckon."
"Good, thanks Mr. McGucket," said Dipper.
"I almost forgot! These glasses what I'm wearin' are a monster!"
McGucket pulled the living spectacles off his nose and threw them to the ground. They scuttled away.
Stan got the carpet out of the bag Soos brought, and they soon had McGucket in the Author's body. Now the other glasses creature was in McGucket's body, and it didn't know how to stand up. The secured it with a rope to a nearby pine tree, just in case it tried to escape.
"We just need to find Gompers and our circle of ten will be complete," said Dipper.
"We'll find Waddles and Gompers together," said Mabel. "After all, they're a married couple."
"They were only together because you taped them together," said Dipper. "I doubt very much if..."
"Waddles! Sooey! Sooey!" Mabel called, interrupting her brother.
Waddles came running up, with Gompers close behind.
"See!" said Mabel, sweeping up the pig into her arms. "I missed you so much, Waddles!"
"So, you're the Author," Dipper said to the goat. "We're about to do the ceremony to seal away Bill."
Gompers nodded, and moved to where McGucket stood in the body of the Author. Gompers grabbed at the trench coat with its mouth.
"It's all right, goat," said McGucket. "I ain't the enemy. It's me, Fiddleford."
"I think it wants something in your pocket, dude," said Soos.
McGucket looked in the trench coat pocket and found a quill pen. Gompers seized it in his mouth.
"He wants to write something," said Dipper. He held out Journal 3 on a blank page.
The goat wrote in a large scrawl: "THE FEZ IS WRONG."
"What does that mean? Stan is a ringer?" asked Dipper, giving Stan a suspicious scowl.
"THE SYMBOL," wrote Gompers.
"How could it be wrong?" asked Stan. "This is the fez I always wear, and it's always looked like this. It matches the Wheel drawing."
"I think I know what he means," said Googie. "I'm from a different timeline. Your symbol has changed from the one we have. Ours is a crescent moony thing with a handle on the back. Yours is a Pac-Man Fish eating a dot. If you look at it sideways, it's like a triangle with one eye."
"It's a thing that pertains to the demon!" said Dipper. "He must have used our jumping around in time to cause the design to change, in order to mess up the ceremony. You have to take it off and put it in the center, Stan."
"Then what will I wear for the Wheel?" asked Stan.
"Give me a few minutes and I'll knit you a new hat with the right symbol," said Googie. "I'm a fast knitter, like Mabel."
"That's 'cause you're me," said Mabel.
She handed Googie some yarn and knitting needles, and Googie got to work on the new fez.
"Let's get all the other stuff out of our pockets that has his image," said Dipper.
He took out the negative twelve dollar bill and put it into the center of the circle. All the others got rid of their regular one-dollar bills with the Eye in the Pyramid. Dipper tore the images of Bill Cipher out of the Journals and added those as well.
Stan put in the bad fez, and the captured glasses that were possessed by Bill. He put on the new fez when Googie finished it.
McGucket took off the glasses the Author was wearing, and put them on Gompers.
"I reckon these specs are real, since they have a crack in 'em," said McGucket.
"I think we're ready," said Dipper. "Let's do this."
"I have a request before we do," said Gideon. "Mabel, may I have a goodbye kiss from you?"
"Umm," said Mabel, looking unhappy at the idea.
"Please, Mabel," said Gideon. "We could all be about to die. I'd like one farewell kiss from my peach dumplin', all right?"
"He did help us read the clues. I'll do it if you won't," said Googie.
"I'd rather kiss the real Mabel," said Gideon. "But..."
Googie moved in close to Gideon, who was now a little taller than she was after his three years in the dimension of the ship painting. She grabbed him and gave him a kiss, which seemed to last a little longer than she expected.
"You're a pretty good kisser," Googie told Gideon when she had finished.
"Thank you kindly," said Gideon.
"How did you learn to kiss like that?" asked Googie.
"Well, there were a couple of sailors on the ship..." said Gideon, turning red.
"Too much information," said Googie, pushing back from him.
"None of your kisses for me, fake Tambry," said Robbie. "I'll just feel my angst to the end."
"Dipper, would you like a goodbye kiss?" Wendy asked, starting to move toward him.
"Hold it, sister," said Pacifica, pushing Wendy out of the way. "Nobody kisses Dipper but me."
Pacifica pulled Dipper into a kiss, a long one.
"Sorry, I got a little carried away," said Pacifica when she came up for air. "Can I pay all of you to pretend that never happened?"
"You're not rich any more, right?" said Mabel. "There's no way we're going to let you and Dipper forget this."
"I don't want to," said Dipper, with a big grin.
"You could all get wiped out... but please don't," said Pacifica.
Everyone got into their places in the circle, joining hands. (The ones next to Gompers held his right forelegs).
The order was: Soos (the Question Mark), Wendy (the Ice Bag), Stan (the Crescent), Dipper (the Pine Tree), Gideon (the All-Seeing Pentagram), McGucket in the Author's body (the Six-Fingered Hand), Googie (the Llama), Mabel (the Shooting Star), Robbie (the Stitched Heart), and Gompers, overshadowed by the spirit of the Author (the Glasses).
Dipper read the words, "Exodus triangulum. Null entangulum. Pandemonium finite incantatum."
The world turned gray and a giant glowing figure of Bill Cipher appeared.
"HA HA! THIS IS THE MOMENT I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR! NOW I'LL BEGIN MY NIGHTMARE RULE... WAIT A SECOND! I'M FADING OUT! I'M GOING INTO LIMBO FOREVER! CURSE YOU, SOMEHOW YOU MEAT-BAGS GOT IT CLOSE ENOUGH TO RIGHT..."
The giant triangle shrank and shrank until it disappeared with a pop. Everyone shook their heads as they woke from the mini-dream.
There was a cheer from everyone.
"We did it!" Mabel yelled.
"Awesome!" yelled Dipper.
"Nobody died!" said Robbie.
"I wouldn't say that," said McGucket, in the Author's body.
He pointed to the pine tree where they had tied McGucket's regular body with the glasses creature inside.
The tree was ablaze, and the body was reduced to a skeleton.