Episode 9: SnowFlakes and BrokenHearts
"The snow itself is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only." –Joseph Wood Krutch
"Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart." –Anne Frank
"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places."–Ernest Hemingway
Wendy stared at the calm sea as she walked the streets of Glass Beach. The early morning air made the journey more comfortable than it should have been, considering what she trying to learn. The town didn't have much to it, just a couple restaurants and shops along Main Street.
She passed a theater which appeared to have gone unused for the past twenty years at least. No wonder Stan had grown so ambitious, he had grown up in a dump. The town was only made to look larger by how the houses were listed out, each with their own view of the water.
When she spotted a pudgy old man gardening, she broke into a run, stopping at the fence. "Sir, may I speak with you a moment?"
He looked up and grunted. "What do you want? I don't give to street kids." He spat a little at the word.
"I don't want any money I just want to know if um, Carla McCorkle, still lives in this town?"
The man sat up. "This is about the Pines brothers, isn't it?"
Wendy blinked. "It's about Stan Pines…ummm, he has a brother?"
The man stabbed his trowel into the wet earth. "Yeah, how could you not know that if you're doing research on him?"
Wendy coughed. "He didn't mention it when I interviewed him."
"Well, doesn't surprise me considering what Leland did to him."
Wendy leaned forward. "What did he do?"
The man stood. "Leland mutilated his fingers and stole all his cash. That was the last anyone saw of Leland." He moved to his porch. "It's weird, I always figured that Stanford would be the one to do something like that. He was always talking to himself and always about the most morbid of subjects. Heh, but I guess Stanford is the only one of us whoever left this crummy town with better things up the road."
Wendy took a moment to soak up this information. "Did they ever catch Leland?"
"Hell if I know. Their father died shortly after and his wife moved away."
Wendy nodded. "But about my original question…"
The man pointed towards a tiny white house up the hill. "Just like I said, only of us to leave this town with better things ahead. I don't think Carla could leave if she wanted to."
Wendy thanked him for the information and turned her stroll into a light jog. The trail was finally getting warm.
[0]
Robbie stared at the place he had hoped to never again enter.
Home.
It was full of long sessions of tag in the backyard, of hopping the fence and running through the gravestones which adorned the hill. It was just as much rich with late sessions on the back porch with the rod, and waking up in the middle of the night to watch your parents walk out amidst the graves to help the sheriff with what his father referred to as "nameless."
He shuddered and opened the white picket gate which fit the rest of the perfect little house. Flowers had been arranged, all separate like his mother always wanted. No mixing, no sir; that would just cause confusion. Robbie was sure that had Cathy not died, he would have run off with her the moment he learned how to drive.
It was that or allow her to die in this town, another victim of the bigotry brainwash campaign.
He winced before knocking on the door, finding that it had not been repainted since he left two years ago despite the chipping paint. The chit-chat inside was paused, and he heard the click-clack of his mother's heels against the marble door area.
She opened the door a crack and looked taken aback. "Robert? I…We heard that you-!"
"I don't care. I just need to get something from my room."
She became hurt. He didn't care. She couldn't act like his sister was just another body committed to the ground in the dead of night, she couldn't turn Cathy into nothing but a sad memory and expect his love.
Racism bordering on xenophobia? Yeah, he could deal with that. Utter banality? Sure. The illegal concealment of unidentified corpses for the purpose of conspiracy? Robbie had broken more laws and social norms than he could count on his one hand. None of that mattered.
But she did, and they had pretended she didn't so that they could go on with their petty lives.
Realizing that he wouldn't apologize, she moved and allowed him inside. He struggled not to spit on the "Bless this house" sign posted to the wall. The only thing "blessed" about this house, was that the Devil hadn't found it yet.
Well, Sweetdreams is coming, isn't he?
Robbie shook himself, unsure as to where the voice had come from. The two women who his mother had been discussing the weather with, Mrs. Luiz and Mrs. June (he could still remember them telling him that you shouldn't laugh in church) stared at him like he was a ghost.
He smirked and climbed the red-carpeted stairs. Pictures littered the walls, all of them depicting his father and mother smiling and holding hands at various, boring locales. There was one which showed the congregation, and Father Nathaniel leered at him from the photo.
You can't escape the eye of God, son.
No, but any god who took Cathy was worthy of watching any chaos which Robbie might be able to inflict upon the people of this world.
When Robbie got to the second floor, he paused. Cathy's room was right across from him, the entrance blocked by a file cabinet. It was no doubt completely untouched, the dollhouse coated in dust, just as the windows were.
But what truly drew his attention, was his own room. It had been stripped bare, nothing left. He wondered how much time they spent, loading his things into their Cadillac and bringing them to the garbage dump.
He realized that he had become just like Cathy. They had erased him from their lives. Mr. and Mrs. Valentino didn't have any children; you must be misinformed because they NEVER had a child.
He had become one of the faceless.
Robbie knelt beside the board, removing the Swiss army he had bought with what little money he had left after the chorus of doctor's bills. Stabbing the blade into the crack between the boards, Robbie popped up the board and stared into the eyes of the beast.
The gun which he had almost used on himself after Cathy's funeral. After the world had turned against him.
Then he had met Wendy in the graveyard. She had saved him. She had stopped him from using the rather easily acquired gun using his father's credit card.
And now, in her absence, he was finally going to use it.
He wouldn't spend his days in jail. No, if Dipper was to die and they tracked it to him, then Robbie knew that the five other bullets in the barrel would prove just as useful as the first.
He placed the gun in his pocket and stood.
Bless this house indeed, it was about to have another dead child on its hands, or at the least, an imprisoned one.
[0]
Stan had told Dipper to take a day in which he would not do anything but relax.
After about half an hour of flipping through the local channels, Dipper decided that he would not be able to relax while inside.
So he wished Mabel good luck with her latest art project and headed out the back door.
The crunch of needles beneath his feet was soothing, just as the warm breeze against the back of his neck made him smile. Forests of pine trees filled the few nostalgic memories which he held. The woods had always been an escape, even when he and Mabel were too young to know what they were escaping from.
Playgrounds had been their castles and forests had been the enchanted lands in which their imaginations (mostly Mabel's, but he was fine with that) to run wild. The bridges had trolls under them and the trees all had elves hiding somewhere above amidst the branches.
Of course now, there might be actual trolls and elves in these woods.
He paused beside a redwood, leaning against it, and listening to the bird song. The sound of running water brought him to a small embankment and a stone bridge which was halfway to collapsing. He kneeled on the cluster of orange lilies, reaching into the stream and splashing some water onto his face.
It reminded him of the time he had encountered a gray, skinny being with large eyes and no mouth, in his first week in this valley. The encounter had following him washing the tears from his face after Mabel had resisted his attempts to save her from the Fey.
Kneeling there, with the sun drying his face, it occurred to him that all creatures of this world, magic or no, would need water. Rivers like this must be places where the supernatural occasionally gathered to lap up the water.
Of course, creatures like the Fey needed an adequate opportunity to hide, else they might be disturbed by human beings. Maybe not hunted, or discovered, but creatures of their kind might count the simple fact of being noticed as negative. In these woods, you could probably hide anything.
He then had to wonder, had the creatures which inhabited this valley migrated towards it following the modernization of Europe (as faeries were a European invention)? More important than water, did the valley hold enough nooks and crannies to hide a whole race? He almost felt bad for them, despite how loathsome their view of human beings was.
But the world had once belonged to them, it had once been nothing but trees for as far as the eye could see. Nowadays, the world had fewer nooks and crannies with every year. Would the Fey even have anywhere to hide in a couple decades?
Well, if the town atrophied at a faster rate than it currently was (he still didn't understand why the town had not turned into a ghost one by now), then the Fair Mansion might be here long after the water tower and train tracks had collapsed with rust.
Sighing with the realization that he would probably never come back to this place after this summer, and never receive those answers, he stood. Maybe it was a good thing that he would never come back, considering what he had faced yesterday. He still had a split lip from being assaulted by Richneck, although his encounter with the creature under the lake had caused him far more trauma.
Something shiny buzzed past his ear and grabbed his attention. It had six, silvery reflective wings which created a rainbow when the morning light struck it. Dipper removed his notebook, bending to one knee and holding his breath as he observed its movements.
It was a pixie; a tiny humanoid, its shimmering wings clumping together as its proboscis descended into the flower. Seconds ticked by as the creature lapped up the nectar and Dipper tried to memorize the details of it so that he could write it down later. The creature had pale blue skin and four arms rather than any legs. He wondered if it could comprehend him, if he was the Gn'aak of this situation, too fascinated by the ant to crush it between his fingers.
When the pixie finished, it turned his way, its compact eyes monitoring him. It hopped onto the leaf of the flower, and Dipper extended a hand. It stared at his palm, before hopping on. The pixie's prickly tail drew across his skin and caused him to wince.
"What are you looking at?"
He looked up and found Pacifica staring at him. The creature twitched, and he raised a finger to his lips. She frowned and approached. She was dressed in golf wear, with a half-cap.
Sitting down beside him, she tensed when she saw the creature. It looked up at her and its proboscis extended a little, before rolling back up. Then, the pixie buzzed into the air and disappeared into the canopy above. Dipper realized, staring up at the sky, that it was afternoon already.
"What was that thing?"
Dipper grew annoyed. "Don't you ever listen to anything besides the sound of your own voice?"
She looked about to punch him. He remained unimpressed.
Taking a deep breath she folded her arms. "Why didn't you warn me about that thing?"
He frowned. "Why would I? It wasn't dangerous."
"And how do you know that?"
Dipper raised The Journal. "Secrets of the universe."
She rolled her eyes. "I apologize for trying to make sure you hadn't found some weird mystical thing and become obsessed with it."
Dipper stretched his arms. "Why would you care anyhow?"
She glanced back at him. "You know, I'm not heartless."
"I know." He sat back down. "I've just been going through a lot of shit recently, and I'm not in the mood to deal with anyone else's."
Her expression turned confused. "Well, you can't complain. You do it to yourself."
Dipper drank from his water bottle and met her gaze. "That so?"
She stared at her reflection in the water. "I don't mean…I'm not saying that you deserve it…but you do go looking for trouble."
He offered the water, noting how sweat soaked her skin was. "If I don't learn about this stuff, how can I expect to stop it? The Faeries, Gideon, The Shapeshifter…I had no control over those. They would have come after me and Mabel no matter what I did."
She accepted the water, and he made a mental note to boil the cap later so that he did not get any contaminants which she may have left on the rim.
"I know…but you could stay home all day, reading that book. Instead, you go out, looking for stuff that no one understands. It's like you revel in the unnatural."
He shrugged. "I've never been good at the natural. I'm not like you, I can't make people like me, I can't pretend to be something I'm not."
Her brow furrowed. "And what are you?"
He took the bottle back gently, slipping it back into his book bag. "I'm a weirdo."
She rolled her eyes. "Oh cmon, Mabel is more unusual than you-"
He brought a hand to his forehead and parted his hair. Her eyes widened when she saw his birthmark.
"…your name."
He rolled his head forward and stared at the water as she sat down beside him. "I belong here, even if this place is harsh to me…it's kind of all I got going for me…"
Pacifica looked to her lap. "You're not that bad. Standoffish, but…" She exhaled. "Remember in the library, when you were freaking out?"
He chuckled. "Right. I never apologized for that…"
"Don't."
He was almost taken aback by the boldness in her voice.
"You're honest. More honest than some people can ever hope to be. And you've got to stick to your guns, right?"
He smirked. "I guess you do…"
"I have song…Umm, I'd like you to hear…do you mind?"
He shook his head.
She removed her MP3 player and offered him one ear bud. He placed them in his ears and she pressed play after placing the other in her ear. A familiar tune came on, surprising him. It was Frank Sinatra, crooning over how "That's Life."
He looked over to her and found her bobbing her head, eyes closed.
"Some people get their kicks…Stomping on a dream…But I don't let it get me down…'Cause this fine old world it keeps spinnin' around…"
He began to sway his own head, wondering where she had first heard this song. He remembered what she had said in the library, how she had been unable to fail her parents. It seemed wrong for someone as free-willed as her to be controlled.
"…And I can't deny it…Many times I thought of cuttin' out…"
Are you really gonna fall for this all over again? She's going to use you, PineTree. Just like everybody does.
"…but my heart won't buy it…"
He swallowed and realized that his throat had grown clogged. He removed the ear bud and stood up, finding the need to catch his breath.
Be quiet, be quiet, oh please just be quiet. The voice didn't respond. Dipper got the feeling that it was silent only to humor him.
Pacifica watched him turn away, confused as to what had just transpired.
"Are you alright?"
"I'm gonna roll myself up in a big ball and die…"
He tugged out the ear bud. "I'm fine, I just realized that I have something to do."
She frowned but didn't stop him from throwing his book bag over his shoulder and turning back the way he came.
"Wait!"
He stopped and turned with a swallow.
She moved to his side, handing him The Journal. "You forgot your secrets of the universe, Mr. Weirdo."
He managed a smile. "Thanks. And thanks for cheering me up."
She shrugged. "I was having a shitty day anyway."
He scratched the back of his neck. "Well, I'm sorry for doing my best to make it shittier. I recently had by brain invaded by a being of unspeakable power…so…yeah, I've got a feeling that shitty days are that's ahead."
She frowned. "Wait, so something started talking inside your brain?"
He nodded.
"So…a demon?"
His eyes widened. "Oh, I uh, I don't know. Why? Do you know something about demons?"
"I just read a little about them. They're supposed to do that…you know…put their thoughts into yours so that they can control you."
He gave her a decisive look. "Where did you learn this?"
"There's a book back at my house, which talks about this kind of thing."
He stepped closer. "Would you mind if I borrowed it?"
"Not at all. I never use it anyway, I'll bring it by tonight."
[0]
"Excuse me, are you Carla McCorkle?" Wendy asked the sixty-something woman who reeked of menthol cigarettes.
She was wearing a pink bathrobe and a couple white slippers. Her face held a youth to it which had long gone from her eyes. There was still some chestnut to her mostly light gray hair.
While her hair might one day turn white, her teeth were stained yellow. There was a scar running down her right cheek.
Age had not made her frail but hardened.
The woman gave a nod and then let out a long sigh. "That's me. You here to badger me about the Pines twins like all the big city?"
Wendy averted her eyes. "Well, yes, but not because I'm part of any newspaper. I just want to know the truth. I used to work for Stanford Pines…"
The woman exhaled and sat down at her kitchen table. "Wipe your feet on the mat and close the door on your way in. This house is drafty enough."
Wendy did as requested, and moved to the opposite side of the table. "Umm, you were married to Stanford, correct?"
Carla giggled and flicked ash into the tray in the center of the table. "Did he tell you that? Or did you just get your information mixed up?"
Wendy sighed. "Well, I am getting a lot of confusing information about the Pines family."
Carla shrugged. "Yeah, that makes sense. Lee never liked it when people knew more about him than he did about them. I imagine the story has been pretty messed up by local rumor and time. Time distorts everything."
Wendy removed her notepad. "So…did Leland really mutilate Stanford?"
Carla snuffed out the cigarette. "First, tell me. Where are you from? You're not from around here."
Wendy shrugged. "The west coast."
Carla nodded. "And what did Stanford show you that was so startling you had to come all the way here?"
Wendy knew that the woman would not divulge information without first receiving an answer to the question. It was in her tone, her stare, and body language.
"He showed me something which I would prefer to forget. Now please, I need…I need some closure on this."
Carla sniggered. "You want closure? I've spent the last forty years waiting for closure." She looked about ready to stab Wendy with the knife which she had been using to cut tomatoes when Wendy came knocking.
But instead, she removed a cigarette from her pack, this time offering one to Wendy ("No thank you, Ma'am). After her initial inhaling, she smiled with nostalgia.
"I was married to Leland Pines for two years. We first dated after he knocked out a bastard who was in the middle of sexually assaulting me. That was back in high school. Lee dropped out eventually and started working as a fisherman." Long inhale, long exhale. Wendy became aware that, with the rise of the sun and the lack of air conditioning, this room was rather stuffy.
"We bought this here house together, I commuted between college and town. Lee always had a smile for me, even though he wasn't very good at fishing." She took a deep breath. "He proposed six months in. Of course, I said yes, you didn't wait to get married back then. Ford was at the wedding." Wendy could hear the seagulls outside. "…I wish he hadn't been. I wish he had been like his parents and just left us alone. He's the one who ruined Lee's life."
Wendy frowned. "Wait, how?"
Carla tilted her head. "Do you want me to tell you the details or do you want context?"
Wendy folded her arms. "It's just that you seem to be focusing bits of the story which are not important."
Carla smirked. "Relax, girl. I've waited forty years to get zero answers…you can wait a couple minutes." She snuffed out the cigarette. "Not to mention, after a while, you get sick of answering the same questions over and over again. If you want to hear Ford's and Lee's stories, you're going to have to deal with mine."
Wendy let out a long held breath. "I apologize. Please continue."
Carla moved to the oven. "First, I'm going to make myself some coffee. I hear you west coast millennials go nuts for coffee."
Wendy shrugged. "I wouldn't say no to a cup."
"Good, because I woke up today feeling like shit and if I tell you the whole story, I'm going to end up feeling worse."
[0]
Robbie leaned against Cathy's grave. When he closed his eyes, he could still see her. He could hear her heavenly laughter, her ever-present smile. Her eyes when he fell back to Earth and from the grip of death.
You have to. You promised that you would always protect me.
Right, from nightmares. At age five to six, Cathy had been cursed with night terrors. She used to go running down the hall, diving into his bed and clutching him, forcing him to promise he would send the monsters away.
Eventually, she just always went to sleep in his bed, and that seemed to send the night terrors away.
You promised.
You couldn't protect someone who was already dead. But you could protect what they loved. And what Cathy had loved was these woods, the plants, and the animals. If whatever power she had warned of was properly invoked, then all that would be ash. This valley which had taken her from the world would turn into a scar on the earth. That or the entire world would be one big scar.
He couldn't let that happen.
First, though, he wanted one last stop at his favorite place in the world. One last enjoyment of the serenity before he gave up what little he had left (his freedom, his morals).
Then, he would give it all up for her.
[0]
"Lee was a gambler. Ford was a workaholic. Together, they didn't let anyone boss them around…except their father, Phillip. That man was a monster. They feared him like most people fear a home invasion or the economy tanking. Phillip never thought it was worth paying for the therapy which Ford clearly needed. Nope, just let the boy work himself out, that was his philosophy. I hope that in whatever pit his soul is currently inhabiting, he's happy with how this all turned out." She blew the curling steam from her second cup of coffee. "I suppose, Lee didn't think Ford needed therapy either. He thought that he would be enough to keep his brother in check."
She sipped her mug. "He was wrong."
Wendy waited for her to resume her story, eyes locked on the coffee in the chipped arctic blue mug which Carla had offered.
"Ford used to stumble in during the middle of the night, speaking nonsense and holding this wild look in his eye. He used to repeat numbers, over and over again to himself. He considered himself a genius but…I don't think he was. He just had strokes of genius, which I think is because he had a split personality. One moment he would be quiet, a little bit odd. The next, he would speak to himself in a rougher, more casual voice. The same voice he spoke to Lee in." She was about to light the third cigarette when Wendy asked if she would like a joint instead.
Carla smiled. "Sure thing, it's been a while anyhow."
After a couple puffs, she continued. "The thing which got Lee banished from the Pines house was how he gambled away some of Ford's college fund. But the thing which got him chased out of town, the same day that Phillip had a stroke…was when they found Ford down by the beach, washing his bloody hands in the water."
Wendy folded her arms. "But I've met him, he has five fingers on each hand."
Carla gave her a look, like her skin, had just turned purple polka dots. "Stanford used to have six fingers on each hand. He was what they call a 'medical anomaly.' He used to have six fingers…that is…before they found him out there on the sand. Well, I imagine he's used makeup to cover the scars by now."
Wendy took a deep breath, trying to process all of this. "So…you don't believe that Lee cut off his brother's fingers? You said that he wanted Ford to um, fit in."
Carla shook her head. "He just wanted his brother to be happy. He had been looking after Ford his whole life, tending to his wounds, always supporting him. I don't think that, if he could have stopped it, my ex-husband would have allowed anyone to hurt his brother."
"Then who-"
"Phillip? Some of the people who Ford owed money? I'm not sure who would do something as bizarre and cruel as that. All I know is that Ford had a bunch of money saved up to build this machine, which he claimed was going to 'change the world.' Lee left town with that money, maybe to pay off his brother's debts, maybe to buy himself a ticket as far away from here as possible. But he left a note."
After a moment of silence, she stood and moved to the cabinet which displayed a couple plates of china. Then she opened the top drawer and removed a slip of yellow paper. "I showed it to the police, and to those two men from the CIA, although why they were involved in Lee's affairs, I don't know."
Wendy asked if she could hold the note before actually doing so. Her eyes widened as she read.
"I KNOW THAT YOU MAY HATE ME AFTER THIS. I KNOW THAT EVERYONE IN TOWN WILL HATE ME. I'M SORRY, BUT I HAVE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE. I CAN'T RETURN UNTIL IT IS FIXED. WE WILL MEET AGAIN, I PROMISE."
The hand messy handwriting displayed all capital letters, the note having been written in the dark blue ink. Stains clung to the paper, the result of spilled coffee while others appeared to be the remnants of ash. She wondered how many times Carla must have considered burning the note.
"He left about a thousand dollars with that note. I wanted to tear it up, hell, I must have cried for hours." Wendy slid the note back over to Carla, who considered it with the same attitude one might direct towards roadkill. "He broke my heart, and yes, I think he either did something horrible or let something horrible happen to his brother." She looked up, meeting Wendy's eye. "But Lee would have sooner fed himself to the sharks than purposely hurt his brother. Ford left soon after for Cambridge and uh, that's the last I heard of either of them."
Wendy nodded as she stood. "Thank you for telling me this."
Carla stood up. "Umm…if you wanna to know anything else…well, their house is still here."
Startled, Wendy asked for directions. Once they were provided, she nodded thanked Carla for the coffee.
The old man called out as she reached the door. "What did Ford show you anyway?"
Wendy shuddered at the memory. "It's not the kind of thing I can describe." And with that, she was out and headed for Stan Pines' childhood home.
[0]
Mabel glared at the chunk of clay.
It resisted her attempts to envision how to transform it into a giraffe. She hated this feeling, being on the edge of something and wasting her time with nothing.
An idea as to how she would execute the transformation popped into her head, and she leaped at the block, rolling up her sleeves and beginning to mold it with her hands.
"Excuse me…? Th-the generator broke…a-and I n-n-need someone to hold the access hatch open for me w-while I w-work on it."
She glanced up from the half-formed giraffe and found McGucket inhabiting the doorway. At first, she was hesitant, given how, according to Candy, he had been involved in the stealing of a body. Last night she had seen from her bed as Stan drove off, dead of night. If McGucket was sane enough to understand what Stan required of him, how could he be trusted to not turn on her if Stan wanted him to do just that?
However, the look on his face was timid that she couldn't very well refuse him. She slid off the bed and followed him out to the generator behind The Shack.
He worked faster than she thought possible, his fingers dancing across the machinery in search for any issues while she tried to get a good look at what he was doing. It was only standing over him now, that she realized she was taller than him. She also realized that he muttered to himself while working, and stranger, did so in a voice so much harsher than his regular one she had trouble understanding what it was he was saying.
Finally, she set down the access plate, and he drilled it shut. Refusing to meet her eye, he stood and coughed. "Th-thank y-you for th-the h-help…"
She nodded and was about to turn away when he spoke. "Umm…w-were you doing arts and c-crafts?"
She frowned. "Oh I…yeah, I was sculpting."
He raised his eyes and gave a hesitant smile. "R-really? M-my wife and I used to…to make art together every evening…we were p-p-planning on teaching Tate but we never…never g-got around t-to it…heh, stuff ch-changes I guess…"
She bent slightly. "Would you like to do some with me?"
He was startled by the offer and gave a goofy grin. "Sh-sh-sure…"
They spent the next hour in her room, Mabel still careful in his presence. She completed her giraffe quicker than that, but it took McGucket quite some time to finish. When he finally did, she saw that he had made a plane, the old kind used in WWI.
She clapped when he showed it to her and he thanked her for the chance. "I-I d-don't have a lot to do…and…to know that you'd hang around with a messed up geezer like me, it…it warms my heart…"
Her smile disappeared as he turned away. "Why do you let him push you around?"
He glanced back, obviously confused.
"Stan I mean, why do you let him tell you what to do all the time? You don't seem like you want to do any of the less umm, savory stuff…but you do anyway."
McGucket gave a shrug. "He-he-he's m-my only f-f-friend."
With that, he turned away with a vacant expression. Mabel allowed that to soak in. She glanced back at his plane and noticed that he had inscribed a name onto it.
"ISABELLA"
The name held no special meaning to it, for her. But there was a bittersweet romanticism to it. She had a sinking feeling of just who Isabella was.
Only friend? How was someone supposed to stay moral when their only friend, the only person they relied on started doing immoral deeds and needed their help? Who would choose ethics over companionship?
If Dipper started digging up bodies, would she be the one to turn him in? Would she go to jail for him? Would she throw her life away? She had friends now; Candy, Pacifica, even Brenda had risked her life to save her brother after only one polite discussion with him. But she had met them all within the past month. Dipper had been with her since day one, he had protected her from physical and spiritual attacks from every turn.
Ever giving up on him for an easier life, would be screwing him over in the way which she had always feared he might do to her.
She sighed. It came down to the fact that a good sister would not allow her brother to go off the deep end. A good sister would not allow the choice to come into play because she wasn't obsessed with her own crap.
A good sister wouldn't hide something like their uncle's nocturnal activities from her brother after she freaked out whenever that brother became reclusive and did not share information. That wasn't a friend, that wasn't a member of the family.
That was a leech.
[0]
Robbie watched as kids played, a warm smile on his face. The bench was hot beneath him, but he didn't mind. Twice now, kids had asked about his arm. He didn't mind that either.
This was the place where he used to take Cathy, where he had pushed her on the swing set and counted to ten before searching for her.
"Aren't you a sight for sore eyes?"
Robbie looked up from the mulch and smiled up at Tambry. She wore a pair of black slacks and a green tee shirt with the words "Me sarcastic? Never" written in purple across the chest and stomach.
She sat down beside him. "Although, you should probably shave. You are not pulling off the stubble."
Robbie ran his hand across his chin, noticing how she was correct. He had not shaved since entering the hospital. It's funny how some things didn't matter as much after your entire existence is turned on its head.
"I guess I let time get away from me."
She smirked. "Where did you get that sweater?"
Robbie glanced at the gray sweater which only had one full-length sleeve, the other side with a hole for his stump. "Mabel made it for me, actually."
"The girl who was possessed and almost killed us?"
He nodded solemnly, wondering what would become of her after he stole the thing she cared most about.
"I…I'm sorry that I didn't visit you in the hospital."
Robbie shrugged. "It's fine."
Tambry shook her head. "No, it was stupid and selfish of me. You needed me the most you ever have and I…I was too afraid."
Robbie glanced up. "Afraid of what?"
She let out a long sigh. "That you would lash out…that I would…I…"
He smiled. "We've known each other since kindergarten, right?"
She nodded.
"So just tell me. I've stabbed someone before Tambry, I've assaulted…a number of individuals." I'm about to murder someone because they might deserve it. "It's not my place to judge others."
Tambry sighed and he realized how cute she looked when uncomfortable.
"I've had a crush on you…for a very long time. I was afraid that if I came by during your stay, that would…slip out now that Wendy is out of the picture. I was afraid that I would freak you out or that you would be resentful. And then, then I was afraid you would hate me for not visiting as soon as possible."
Robbie caught his breath and then stared at the cloudless sky. "Tambry, I would…I'm not…I have something I have to do. And I'm afraid that this might be our last conversation if I go through with it."
Tambry's eyes widened. "You're not going to kill yourself are you!?"
He shook his head. It's worse; he wanted to say but didn't.
She slid closer to him. "Well, you survived losing Cathy, Juvenile Hall, having your arm ripped off…I think that whatever it is you have to handle…I believe you'll survive it."
What if I don't want to?
He choked up, realizing that this only made what he had to do more painful. "I…I…"
"Hey," She wrapped an arm around him. "Don't cry, you'll make all the kiddies feel sad."
Robbie wiped his nose. "Thanks, Tambers."
She flicked him in the ear. "Don't call me that."
He couldn't help but laugh.
[0]
Mabel descended the staircase to find Dipper and Pacifica sharing the sofa. Their eyes were locked onto the book, her telling him something about the book itself while he read it with growing caution.
But from the moment she saw them, from the moment she saw Pacifica's hand, right next to Dipper's neck, the world slowed down. Her first thought was; oh no. Her second thought was; why is this a bad thing?
Both looked up at her approach and smiled.
"Hey, Mabel!"
"Did you finish your statue?" Dipper asked.
She stepped closer and cracked a grin. "Yeah, I uh, I finished it a couple hours ago. Did you enjoy your walk?"
Dipper smirked. "Well, I ran into ice queen here while I was in the woods and it turned out that not only is she a Sinatra fan, but she plays one of the most boring sports in existence."
Pacifica gave him a friendly, threatening smile. "Hey! I don't see you working out, anyway?" She picked up one of Dipper's arms. "Look at this thing, it's practically a noodle! I bet your sister has more muscle mass than you."
He chuckled and tugged his hand out of Pacifica's grip. "That's cause I've got better things to do than swing a stick at balls until they fall in a hole."
She looked ready to pounce on him when Mabel moved over to them, staring at the picture of a thousand eyes and teeth latched on a cloud of swirling black orbs. "What are you looking at?"
Dipper's attention was returned to the book and he grinned in that enthusiastic way which made him look less tired. "Oh, Paz had a ton of ancient books in the family library and she brought me this one so we could figure out what type of demon Gideon is planning on summoning."
Mabel giggled nervously. "Demons aren't uh, the way that they are in popular culture, right? Like how the faeries turned out to be horrible psychos?"
Dipper shook his head. "They're actually worse from what I've read so far. Although a lot of this is very difficult to understand…if only someone had informed me that the words would be microscopic."
Pacifica folded her arms. "Well, I'm sorry Mr. Pines, that two centuries ago, the person who wrote this book did not write the text to the size which your particular eyes need."
Dipper pretended to be taken aback. "Hey! My eyes are fine! Mabel! Tell Pacifica that my eyes are fine but my bladder has trouble!"
The blonde burst into giggles and Dipper looked pleased to have extracted such a reaction. Mabel however, was already turning away and trying to drill some rationality into her skull.
Why did it matter that the two were hitting it off, perhaps romantically? Hadn't that been what she wanted from the beginning? Dipper was messed up enough when it came to girls, that any non-dysfunctional social practice on his part could not be viewed as a dilemma. Besides, didn't she trust Paz enough at this point, to not ruin his self-esteem (if it even could be worse than it currently was)?
So why, why did she feel like a leech all over again?
Mabel watched Stan as he cleaned plates and whistled "I've Been Working on The Rail Road." She could not turn into a possessive and manipulative monster. No, she would not. That would put her along the lines of Gideon, the person who wanted to summon a demon, the person who was so obsessed with not letting go of his sister that he wanted to kidnap her, just because she reminded him of his long-dead sibling.
She had to tell Dipper tonight.
[Noisufnoc fo not a ni tluser nac ssenevitnevni fo kcal a.0]
Wendy's first step into the Pines family house resulted in a loud creak. This was followed by her nose detecting a pungent rot.
She followed the stench into the kitchen, where food, now black with rot sat in clumps atop cracked plates. Four chairs had been arranged for a meal, all untouched in decades. The kitchen window was broken, and a swarm of ants had found their way to the rotting clumps through that or one of the other various holes in the building.
In the living room, the furniture was untouched. The TV had a thick film of dust across it, and a glass of wine had been placed on the arm table. It too had not been disturbed since whatever had caused people to flee this house, happened.
Wendy climbed the stairs with extreme care, wondering if she would strike the basement if she fell through them. They did not give way by some miracle, and she reached the hall above. A grandfather clock sat against the wall, about seven feet tall. Etched into the yellow wallpaper, there were marks of height. On one side of the timekeeper, the etchings were inscribed hastily, while on the other they were very easy to understand.
Stan and his brother.
They must have competed for who was taller like her brothers did to this day. A sense of homesickness caught in her throat. The grandfather clock chimed and she jumped at the noise. If the miraculously working device was to be believed, it was four already.
Glancing back and forth, she noted the two bedrooms and headed for the one to her right. The bed had been made. On the bedside table, was a family photo.
It depicted a slender, dark-skinned woman in a red dress, beside a stiff looking man dressed in a yellow button up, who wore a pair of sunglasses. At their knee height, were two smiling boys, ten or eleven each. One of them waved at the photo taker with a six-fingered hand, his left arm wrapped around his brother's shoulders. He looked almost identical to his brother, who wore a messy red and white striped shirt to contrast his brother's brown button up, and had oval lenses spectacles vs his brother's rectangular ones.
Beside the photo was a book labeled "THE MASTERY OF PRUNING" had a dog ear on page 27. The passage had been scribbled black with a pen.
Wendy slipped the book into her bag.
A revolver lay on the left side pillow. It had only one bullet in it. She placed it in her bag.
There was a painting of the great Pyramids of Giza hanging on the wall, the nail which supported it creating a storm of cracks across the plaster. Now why did this room lack wallpaper? The window was octangular in shape and overlooked the bay.
She opened the closet. A dozen coats flanked the doorway, all jammed against one another, as though guarding something. Wendy brushed them aside and discovered a door at the back of the closet.
The door was revealed only by how time had stripped it of the paint which had kept it unseen. A four-digit combination lock restricted access to whatever wonders lay beyond it.
Wendy tried "2728" to no avail.
The other bedroom was not as strange, even comfortable to be inside. It was untidy, with a dozen sports magazines supporting an inflatable clown punching bag. The wallpaper peeled down in great strips inside this room, forming claws over to the two beds which the room contained. The right-side bed had a cluster of magazines and wrappers surrounding the single, stained pillow. A picture had been wedged into the rafters above.
It was of Carla, and it appeared to have been torn from a school photo book.
The left side was the opposite. The bed was as clean as a whistle, with four pillows stacked atop on another. A bookshelf had been implanted at a head height of the wall, and it was stuffed. Most of the books appeared to be about geometry and physics.
A box of toys sat beside the door, a book of nautical navigation leaning against it. The room had one window which had been nailed shut from the outside, disturbingly enough. Wendy was about to leave the room when she saw what had been scratched into the paint on the bottom right corner of the window.
"25.0000 N, 71.0000 W" had been written in that same neat engraving as from the right side of the grandfather clock. She picked up the spy glass which leaned against the window and dusted it off, staring out that particular pane. Out, across the water, she could see a boat, shipwrecked against a sandy dune.
She returned to the bedroom and input "2571."
The lock snapped off and she eased the door open. The smell of what maggots are born in struck her and she was presented with a flight of stairs. Along the wooden walls which made the stairs rather claustrophobic, someone had written hundreds of numbers, each half an inch long.
Her fingers tingled when they made contact with that neat, orderly engraving. When she reached the top of the stairs, her breath caught in her throat.
[0]
Robbie found Dipper and Mabel on the back porch. Convenient, considering that he would be able to dash into the woods which he knew like the back of his hand after he unloaded the gun.
One shot to the forehead is all it takes.
"We need to do something!"
"But are you sure? You've been wrong about these things before…"
"Listen, there's no mistake in being safe…right?"
Mabel wrung her hands. "But…a demon?"
Dipper exhaled. "Listen, I know that this is scary. I've already seen what one looks like and they are goddamn terrifying. But we'll make it through this…but only if we cast this spell right now."
She nodded. "Alright, I'll get the supplies."
As she turned inside she managed a smile for Robbie. "Hey! Um, now's not the best time to stop by, but…"
He pushed a smile. It took all the energy in his body. "I actually wanted to talk to Dipper."
Surprised, she made an "o" with her mouth and before heading inside.
Robbie turned to the expectant Dipper and slid a hand into his jacket pocket. "So…what were you two arguing about?"
He waved the question aside. "It's probably for the best if you don't worry about it."
"The last thing I didn't know about took off my arm."
"If you insist."
Sure, anything to keep this moving. Anything to delay the inevitable.
"Well, there's this kid…Gideon…well, he was a kid, by now he's an old man. Anyway, judging from the readouts, I'm pretty sure that he is going to summon a demon."
Robbie froze. "He's a kid?"
"Well, he was. He had this immortality spell…sorry if this sounds cheesy to you."
Robbie swallowed. "D-does he has a book like yours?"
Dipper frowned. "Yeah…yeah, he does…why?"
Robbie let go of the pistol. "What can I do to help?"
Surprised, Dipper removed his wallet. "You can help Mabel buy the supplies that I need to perform an exorcism in case he goes inside anyone's mind. You can drive, right?"
Robbie was too relieved to give anything more than a vague "If she helps."
"Great. We could use all the help we can get." Dipper stepped closer. "Are you…are you crying?"
Robbie turned to the doorway. "I just have something in my eye."
With that, he had turned away from Dipper and inside. Cathy, next time you give me a message, would it kill you to be more specific? He thought, his stomach still in knots but his mouth laughing raggedly anyway.
Life had a funny way of not being as horrible as he assumed it to be. Yes, there was still work to do, but first, he was going to call Tambry. Demon slaying could come second to hearing her voice.
[0]
"Dipper?" Mabel poked one finger against the other, trying to understand how she could broach the subject gently.
Dipper looked away from the billboard of information. "Yes?"
His eyes were so innocent.
"Umm, there's something I've been meaning to tell you…about Stan…"
He nodded patiently, blinking once in the awkward silence created.
"He uh…Um, I was just…well…"
Dipper smirked. "Mabel, it's okay. He's saved me more than once…just tell me what it is."
Mabel swallowed. "I just saw the boxing gloves in his room…and I know that you wanted to learn hand to hand combat…"
He smiled. "Wow, that man really is a jack of all trades."
Mabel nodded, her stomach turning as she moved back inside. Why didn't you tell him, why didn't you say something?
Because a leech dies when it doesn't have something to latch onto.
Tomorrow. She would tell him tomorrow, Mabel assured herself.
[0]
Wendy stared in horror at the center of the attic floor.
There was a triangle, painted in red blood, with a circle surrounding it. Burnt out candles, deformed from their dripping wax, fashioned a pentagram around the circle.
Most disturbing was the sand in the center of the triangle, for it had been arranged to form the words "WELCOME CHILD."
The message didn't stay. As she came closer, it drew across the floor boards, moving without the influence of air flow, but instead flowed like water, pooling and sliding.
"OR SHOULD I CALL YOU WENDY?" It said, sending her stomach into some void. The teen tensed and licked her lips.
She got the impression that someone was laughing at her, somewhere in the universe. A desire to sprint down the stairs and burn this house to the ground on her way out the front door started in her stomach and crawled up into her head, latching onto her brain.
She shivered and bent on one knee, extending a hand to the sand. "What the hell is this stuff?"
The redhead jerked her hand away when the sand stung her fingertips and watched as the sand move again.
"DON'T TOUCH WHAT YOU CAN'T AFFORD." It said. Before she could even contemplate this, the sand leaped back into motion. "THE QUESTION IS NOT 'WHAT', ITS WHO."
The sand quivered on the floor in anticipation of her next question.
She clenched her hand to restore feeling to it and smiled. "Alright…who are you?"
The sand darted about, forming words and then deciding against them. "A FRIEND. YOUR ONLY FRIEND."
She somehow doubted this.
"Why are you here? Did Stan Pines summon you?"
The sand took the time to consider which question it should answer. "STAN PINES DIDN'T SUMMON ME." It jumped into the next sentence just as she finished reading the last as if reading her mind. "STAN PINES THINKS THAT I AM DEAD."
Wendy blinked. "So you're not just…sand?"
"NO, YOU MORON. I AM MORE THAN COULD BE SAID WITH THE SAND IN THE UNIVERSE."
She folded her arms, the pull to leave this town and never come back, returning. "Alright…but you can be killed?"
Laughter filled the air and Wendy glanced around the bare attic, her attention brought back to the sand when it finished.
"NO. STAN PINES IS A BIGGER MORON THAN DR. LOGAN."
She stood, backing away until her spine struck the decaying wall. The laughter returned and she was sure now, that it was coming from the circle. Her desire to leave had 9increased, while her fear of the consequences had grown. What if this thing didn't want her to leave?
Dr. Logan had been the psychiatrist who her mother had gone to. The one who failed at ending her mother's insomnia, the one who she had blamed first following her mother's death. If this being knew about him, then who's to say what it didn't know.
"H-how do you know about that?"
The candles jumped to life, burning blue as the sand moved beneath their aura.
"I HAVE EYES EVERYWHERE…I SEE ALL..." The sand turned to rapid pace words. "REALITY. DREAMS. TIME. THOUGHTS. EVERYTHING. I THINK…THEREFOR YOU ARE."
Wendy got the feeling that the spirit was patting itself on the back for how clever it was. That should have been ridiculous, an egotistical claim even for whatever spirit was responsible for this form of communication. But she believed it.
She moved to the door, heaving it open and throwing one last look over her shoulder.
The sand now appeared pale blue under the candle light just as the paint looked like dried blood. The message, meanwhile, made her blood run cold.
"COME BACK ANYTIME, SNOWFLAKE. I'VE GOT ETERNITY TO WAIT."
The attic disappeared with that final word, her mind leaping to a memory she had not considered in so long that it was almost buried in how different her life had become. As a toddler, she had darted about in the snow, giggling and catching snowflakes on her tongue. And her mother had called her from the doorway of the place that was her home, not a house she hated being inside.
She had run over, hugging her mother's pregnant belly and basking in her warmth. You've got a little something on your nose, Snowflake. Her mother had said with a smile, reached down and brushing a touch of snow from Wendy's nose.
Then her mother had brought her inside, for hot chocolate. She had burnt her tongue on the drink and almost cried from how it felt.
It's alright, her mother had insisted. That's what happens when you drink too much too fast.
Then she had lifted her up and kissed her on the forehead. She had been told that she was always going to be her little snowflake, beautiful and happy. Crystalline in her intentions, the pride and joy of her momma.
Wendy brushed tears from her eyes, her vision returning to the sand.
It had not moved. Making a noise somewhere between a moan and scream, she fled the attic and stopped down the stairs. She twisted her ankle when the last step broke in, sending her toppling forward.
Pushing herself to her feet, she limped out of the bedroom and into the hallway. As she contemplated the flight of stairs, the grandfather clock chimed, startling her into movement. Her descent allowed her to realize that it was dark outside and that the clock was chiming nine o'clock.
Had she been in the attic for hours? How was that possible?
Well, she supposed there wasn't much which was impossible at this junction.
Drunk on her fearful wondering, she stumbled down the beach. The sea was out, giving her the ability to approach that wrecked boat which she had seen from Stan's bedroom. It was completely dark by the time she reached it, the clouds a menacing presence gave what she had just experienced.
In the sloppy blue paint, the vessel had been christened "THE STAN'O WAR." Inside, there was a ton of old toys, newspapers, and boards of wood no doubt fished from the local scrap heap. She remembered the book of nautical dreams.
Stan Pines…what happened to you?
When you thought about Al Capone, you didn't think about little Alphonse Capone playing hide and go seek with the neighbors kids. When you thought about Jack the Ripper, you didn't think of someone who ever had hopes or dreams or happiness. Maybe Stan wasn't comparable to those individuals, but he certainly had his fair share of skeletons in his closet.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair for Stan's already complicated life history to contain inconsistent and misleading information. Wendy sat down beside some boards of wood, staring up at the leaky roof and wondering if she would ever know the truth, or if she would be led in circles.
Whatever had been controlling that sand, however, it was coming for Stan, and by proxy, the twins. She had to stop that, even if she had no idea how.
[0]
Gideon and eight others stood in a circle. Miss Grey was tied to the pole in the center of the circle, naked and screaming, just like he preferred his victims to be. The night sky thundered overhead, the clouds beginning to circle this spot as Gideon drew the correct symbols onto her writhing skin with goat's blood. The wind had begun to pick up, and a light sprinkle pelted the red hood of his ceremonial robes. He stepped back and joined hands with his fellow cultists, all of them chanting as the sky rumbled louder than ever.
The air was cool, the night, young. A silence had come over the entire forest as they arranged the candles. It was time.
Gideon began to recite in Molalla language the words which would summon this –particular demon. All reverence for tone and use was gone, as he didn't understand the language any more than everyone else who had used the chant to summon the presence of what the natives had called "The Twisted One."
Had anyone heard them, they would have considered them gobbledygook, akin to the jargon which Charles Douglas dredged up for The Jabberwocky poem.
But the chant held power. More power than any human being. More power than a trillion atom bombs or a billion dying suns.
The other eight began to recite along with him, all of them having waited their entire lives for someone with the ability to speak with and summon the demons. Some had been raised to worship this creature, others were his agents, following every word he placed in their minds, in return for a prize which would never come. Some were former sacrifices, rejected by him and thus, obsessed with giving themselves to him after glimpsing his "glory."
They were all shells of what they once had been, consumed by "The Twisted One's" intellect. He wouldn't have had them any other way.
Birds fled the area, the worms in the ground dug deeper than ever before to escape the growing corruption. All the radio broadcasts in the area turned to static and the lights all over town flickered. Inside the van full of monitoring equipment, which he had parked on the edge of town, Agent Gray reeled when his headset screeched. The screech did not resemble one created in a mechanical fashion, but rather a sound which humans were not made to come in contact with.
He threw the headset to the floor, stamping his shoe upon the headset until it was nothing but bits. He panted for breath, his pupils returning from dilation to normal. In his living room, Tobias Towner watched as the anchorwoman began speaking directly to him, black liquid pooling around her eye sockets as the scrolling news feed began to depict arcane symbols. Susan Matte's cat leaped off her lap and went streaking out the back door, howling for all that it was worth.
Preston Norwood awoke in bed, his skin beginning to burn. He tossed the prostitute beside him out of bed and grabbed a robe, throwing it on as he sent her out with a well-placed scream. He removed a bottle of fifty-year-old whiskey from his bedside cupboard and cracked it open on strength alone. Standing on the balcony just off his bedroom, he stared at the stars of the sky as he down the bottle one swig at a time.
Hundreds of miles away, Carla McCorkle was awoken by a nightmare and immediately sent into a heart attack.
While Gideon could not witness any of these acts, he had a feeling that something equal was happening.
He was opening the garden gate.
"You can't do this!" Miss Grey screamed, as though she still held some control over the situation. "You'll doom yourselves!"
The clouds parted and the starry sky was shown. It didn't stay that way for long. One by one, the stars blinked out, their light no longer able to reach the minds of the soon to be regretful participants.
He was wiping his shoes on the welcome mat.
Gideon could feel an energy more powerful than any he'd experienced in his entire life, flow through him. It was a thousand times greater than the adrenaline of moving objects with his mind. His comrades felt likewise, and all but him fell to their knees with the force of it. Black ooze poured from their orifices, pooling on the ground. Miss Grey no longer shrieked, but sobbed with the knowledge that soon, she would be his.
The candles were all snuffed out by a gust of wind. Gideon realized that reality must be truly warping because the gust refused to cease blowing. The sound of drums started up, emanating from everywhere. It was followed by a chorus of voices, all singing those deadly, deadly words, rose from the center of the ring.
Fire formed a pentagram around the ten human beings, fire a roaring red at first, but then growing in intensity until it became white, then blue. Obnoxious, screeching laughter filled the air and Miss Grey screamed as yellow energy crackled throughout her being, cooking her from the inside out.
He was kicking down the fucking door.
Miss Grey burned away to a skeleton and the trees surrounding Gideon turned into claws. The fire snaked in between the evoker's of the demonic power and formed a pillar in the center. The azure quality of the flames was replaced by a roaring emerald tint. Slowly, the orb of fire rotated, and with each rotation, expanded. Miss Gray's charred bones were lifted into the air. They danced for a little bit, each one snapping until their still boiling marrow was wrenched free. It circled the orb, once, twice, thrice, and then a shred of void spread across the front of the orb, forming a diamond shape.
This served as an access point for the marrow, and the flames flickered blue. The black expanded until it was a billowing singularity, tugging everything, from light to boulders in its direction. A single pale leg, taller than Gideon was, stepped out of the black hole, stomping on the ground and sending tremors (4.5 on the Richter scale) across the valley.
Gideon realized that the laughter was still going, it had just grown so shrill that first, it had caused his ears to bleed and then had become imperceptible to the human ear. Plasma dribbled down his coat as a pale hand reached out of oblivion and gripped the edge of the black hole. It had four fingers, each one growing thinner until, at their points, they were as thin as a needle. Each finger grew blacker the farther it got from the bandaged yellow flesh of the hand, until at their needle points, they were as colorless as the void from whence they came.
The laughter lowered in pitch, striking his ears again. He could feel his grip on reality giving way, but he'd already gone too far for turning back to be an option. There was no summoning without a deal.
A second hand, then a second leg. Then a third hand, followed by a triangle shaped head with a single eye which lacked a pupil or an iris, or even blood vessels. It was just a milky white orb which appeared to be considering the world. Then came the fourth hand, and the demon hoisted himself out of the portal.
He wore a tattered navy blue jacket, which was missing all buttons. Bandages wrapped around his neck, just as they constricted his hands, wrists, and the part of the leg revealed by his not quite long enough black slacks, just above the blood caked boots which he wore.
The demon's anatomy was so incorrect, that Gideon had to assume that the mockery of human biology was purposeful. For instance, the hands faced in the wrong direction, the arms were longer than the legs (which had to be seven feet tall each).
Most disturbing of these details, however, was how the demon lacked an eyelash. This mean that the eye would never close, never water. It would remain open forever and for always. Never ceasing its observation of the world.
The thought made Gideon want to keel over right there.
As soon as he had fully exited the tear in the dimensional fabric, the demon reached out and in a derision of physical perspective, yanked the black hole up out of the air and held it in front of its head. The singularity had become the size of a record, and for a moment the demon flicked it back and forth like a magician displaying the hare which he had fished out of a hat.
Then he placed the hole into his eye. The tunnel in the universe grew narrower until it formed a reptilian sliver of sight, one which darted between the fallen followers.
The eye locked onto Gideon after a couple seconds, and the massive being stepped forward. With its upper right side hand, it adjusted its moth ridden bowtie, while with its lower left hand, it removed a busted stopwatch and glanced at the clock face with an eye bigger than his head.
Returning the stopwatch into its jacket, the demon leaned down and tilted its head. It spoke in a voice which was just too high pitched to entertain children, but one which sounded like the echoing rasp of an old man, dying at the bottom of a mineshaft.
"You're late, Gideon."
0
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([0])
/{0}\
Message: Evol ew seno eht rof era od ew sgniht lufwa tsom eht.
WE FINALLY GOT TO CIPHER! YEEEEEESSSS.
You have no idea how happy this makes me.
Situation71: Gosh, the way you bring all these canon elements into your story is still amazing. Really loving this.
Thanks! I didn't think I'd be able to include Blandon or Mermando, but I'm very happy how it has turned out. ^u^
Q & A:
NaillingTheSoap: It's interesting to see that Dipper was happy and kinda had a romance here in this chapter. I thought it seemed out of place, but then again the only thing scarier than Hell is Hell with a small chance of getting out of it. Also, Amanda Ramirez... She has a brother... Ramirez... Are you implying that her dead sibling is Soos? The Gnaak killed him?
First off, it is not "The Gnaak", it is "Gn'aak." It is not a title, it's a name. ;=)
Secondly, I did not realize that, but now that you've mentioned it, I might connect her somehow (Soos is too old be her brother and he lives in the wrong place but it is possible for them to bear relation).
Coldblue:
2) Will we see the Pine Twins find out more about Stan Pines so that they can't tell if he a bad man or the lesser evil of this town or someone they can't judge easily?
People who betray Dipper are easily judged by him.
5) Will there be a chapter of Dipper and Mable going into Stan Pines mind to stop Bill Cipher/Dream or Mind Demon? Ever thought of Dipper, Mable, Candy, Pacifica, Brenda, and Wendy look into their own minds to see what makes up their characters/personality/history?
I cannot put that many characters into a setting for one episode. That clutters the narrative. I will, however, be revealing about the minds of the cast in my version of Dreamscapers.
Suggestions
3) It would be great to read a Summary and Conclusion of "Depravity Falls". I mean, I like "Gravity Falls" ending BUT I wanted more. I kind of hope we read a ten year time skip with what going on with the characters such as Dipper, Mable, Stan, Wendy, Pacifica, Candy, Brenda, McGucket and whoever else is alive or not dead at the end of "Depravity Falls". I could read Dipper Pines have doctrines in Linguistics, Archeology, and Criminology and still study Gravity/Depravity Falls mysteries. Mable would be with Dipper adventures, have loving friends, and probably run the Mystery Shack. It would be great to read how Candy's life and Brenda's life turn out if they become a couple or not. Pacifica and Wendy make me curious to wonder how close they are with the Pine Twins. I don't know about Stan because he always a mystery. McGucket had a pretty good ending in "Gravity Falls", but who knows how it will end in "Depravity Falls."
I'll think about it. I do enjoy time skips.
5) This is just an idea from the "Gravity Falls" season one, which focused on "Carpet Diem"/Episode 16 and "Dreamscapers"/Episode 19, I figure it would be a good idea and sort of build trust in this group friends/allies that the Pine Twins have. Of course, they would reveal character development in characters that you wanted to write out, but could never figure out that chapter to do it.
I figure in "Dreamscapers", that in "Depravity Falls" they not only enter Stan Pines mind/dreams but each others. Sort of like a window into how each others mind ticks or why they act like do now. Of course, Mable and Dipper are in there. It would be interesting if Stan Pines entered the kids mind. I wish Pacifica and Wendy would enter Pines Family minds, also the other way around. I'm up in the air about Candy and Brenda, but I feel Candy more likely because she became a great character in "Depravity Falls." It just an idea. I sort of got it from "Nightmare on Elm Street" with how in one the movies the teenagers became Dream Warriors to battle Freddy Krueger, which is not different from a dream/mind demon.
The Dreamscape will be different in that it utilizes the subconscious of all who enter it.