Chapter 14

Mable Pines

"Maybe tomorrow we'll find your home," I said as I peeked the staircase to the attic. I looked over at the window seat Mason had been calling a bed for the past couple of nights only to see he was already curled up under the extra blanket, asleep. His book bag sat on the floor below his head and not for the first time I was tempted to look through it. What other worldly devices might he have in there? I mean, he was technically me so it wouldn't be wrong, right? I took the final step over to him and stopped.

"You know I was asleep," Mason moaned, opening his eyes.

"Sorry," I offered, taking a step back.

"What is it?" Mason asked, sitting up. The blanket slid down to his lap, showing he slept in just his underwear.

"I, uh," I wasn't sure what to say.

Mason looked down at his bag and looked back at me. "You know, we may have grown up different but I still am you. We're curious, can't be helped."

"So what's in the bag?" I asked bluntly.

"Cloths, a small bag of extra fairy stones, my journal," Mason listed off.

He was hiding something. He sounded like I did when I was avoiding something. But it felt wrong to point it out to him.

"Oh, could you put that dimension with Mabel being called Star in my journal?" Mason asked, reaching down to grab his bag. He pulled it up to his lap and unzipped it to pull out the leather journal. He zipped the bag back up and handed me the book. "If you want, you can read through more of it too, before I have to leave."

"Thanks," I said, looking at the jewel on the cover.

Mason put the bag back on the floor and laid back down. "Night."

I looked at the bag as I said, "Night." Nice distraction, giving me something else I'd been curious about. Though I did wanna go through his journal. I turned around and headed into the room me and Mabel shared.

"Come down here right now, Squeaker!" Mabel ordered, standing on her bed in her night shirt looking up into the rafters.

I shut the door behind me and looked up to see the squall perched on one of the beams of wood in our ceiling with his wings wide open for balance. "He'll come down if he sees you in bed," I said, remembering the past few nights he'd curled up in Mabel's blankets.

"I just don't want him to fall asleep up there, what if he falls while he's asleep?" Mabel asked, jumping off her bed. She rushed to her back pack and pulled out her grappling hook.

I rolled my eyes at her and went to sit on my bed, finding Pikme had already claimed a part of it. I sat next to him and looked up to see Mabel had grappled the ceiling above the squall. She pulled herself up to the beam and held out a hand. "Come here," she said in a sing song voice.

I watched as the creature dropped his wings back to his side and crawled off the plank to her hand. She lowered herself back to the ground and hit the button to release the grip as she went back to her bed were Waddles was already making his sleeping spot at her feet. I'd never tell her, but it was cool how she always seemed to be able to understand animals.

I opened up the journal and reached over to the table beside my bed for a pen. Flipping to the next blank page I quickly wrote about two-oh-seven S, writing as much as I could about Jenny and the family I'd run into. I finished with Wendy's death and clicked my pen closed. Sitting my pen on my left side, now that Pikme had scooted closer, and flipped back to the front.

February 4, 2011

I don't know if this day will be marked in history or not but today I start my voyagetrek trip. Four years ago, Susan B. Antony threw Great Uncle Ford's last journal into a portal. Today I became the first kid, no, first human to travel dimensions. Fiddleford has made me promise to keep track of the days and come home every month. I guess he feels responsible for me now.

I don't understand the order behind the number each dimension is called, or even why it's called a number. Ours even has a star in its so called "number". But I'll follow the order Fiddleford created in the portable portal. My first stop will be P4E21.

My first dimension and man it's an eye opener! Fiddleford had started my list of dimensions with what he considered the most likely for Sue to have thrown the journal into but he forgot to tell me it was one molecularly different than our own. My last step through the portal changed my molecules into something out of Japan, the colors here are still too bright for my eyes to comprehend. The people here don't speak any language I know so asking around has proven useless. Right now I have taken a break from my hike in an all too bright forest in my search. I haven't figured out how long I'll stay before I go on and move to the nest one.

I might've made contact with a person! I had drawn a picture of Great Uncle Ford's journal while out eating lunch, if I could call it that, and asked around hoping body language would work and it did. A girl a few years older than me has pulled me along and now I wait in some sort of museum.

I let out a laugh at the last, hasty line written at the bottom of the page.

No, it was her grandma's and not the book.

February 7, 2011

9^'R -what type of "number" is that?

Strange number aside, at least this one brings me to a dimension that looks and feels like home. Two days in that chibi world was too many for me. There isn't a town where Gravity Falls is for me but I lucked out and found a lumberjack living in the woods. He's said my accent is weird, he sounds like he's British to me.

He assures me he knows every tree in these woods and would've seen it if the journal was here. I'll probably just stay a day and look around myself.

I started flipped through, remembering he was eleven when he started this. A few of the early pages held two dimensions each, though as I got closer to our birthday I noticed he tried to put more into each dimension's description.

I found a page dated August 30, 2011 with the title of S4-93 only for Mabel to turn out her lamp and leave me to the darkness. "Mabel!" I whined, barely able to make her out as she crawled into bed with Waddles and the squall.

"I wanna go to sleep," Mabel said. "Last night you stayed up until two, I need to catch up."

I looked over at the clock beside her bed and saw it had just passed eleven. Maybe I should let her get some sleep tonight. I pushed Pikme over a bit so I could stand up and grabbed Mason's journal and the lantern. As quietly as I could I left the room and made my way down stairs. As I passed the living room I lit a match and lit my lantern only to freeze, seeing Ford sitting in the chair in front of the TV. Recovering, I blew out my match and made sure to look at his eyes. I couldn't see them for the reflection of my lantern on his glasses. I don't know why I was still worried about this, but my gut reaction now was to check eyes.

"Couldn't sleep?" Ford asked.

"Couldn't put down this," I said, casually lowering my lantern. I let out a sigh of relief, seeing his brown eyes. "Bill, uh…" How to word it? "Bill's dead, right?"

"No."

I stared at him in surprise. I gripped the handle to the lantern tighter.

"Just like how Stanley managed to regain most of his memories, Bill could reanimate from his stone prison," Ford said, looking down at his lap as he laced his fingers together. He leaned forward as to lean on his knees. He let out a sigh after a moment before saying, "I haven't proven it, so it's only a theory for the moment, but I have reason to believe he could come back." He looked up at me and asked, "Do you know of anyone else he overshadowed?"

"I'm sure Gideon, maybe Bud."

"Then the four of us will have to be careful."

I looked at him confused. "Why us?"

"Ever since we got back, I've been running tests on my brain in my sleep. I've found something akin to a virus, never growing, never moving, but still there in my brain. Bill left it there, as a part of him, his foot print so to say."

"So is there a way to get rid of this virus?" I asked, scared I might have it as well.

"I'm working on it."

"But Bill could come back to life 'cause of the virus?"

"Yes," Ford stated. "There's at least one, possibly four, living pieces of him."

"So you wanna run those tests on me?" I gulped, worried a part of Bill would be found in me. And all because I wanted a stupid password.

"Once I make it easier to sleep with," Ford nodded his head. "How are you and Mason coming at decoding the symbols?"

I reached for my small note pad normally in my inside vest pocket only to remember I was already dressed for bed and the notepad was upstairs. "We've figured out all the vowels, common letters like RSTLN Mason already had, we've added H and I think K. It'll go quicker now that we have a lot of the more used letters."

"How did you figure out Bill's?" Ford asked.

"Well he did give it to you," I admitted, still confused how Ford missed it.

Ford's eyebrows increased, confused.

"Close to the end of what you wrote back thirty years ago, Bill had used you to draw out a wheel with symbols. Each symbol had a number that correlated with the alphabet. I wish I had noticed it earlier but still, he made it easy at least. Sue's not giving us anything like that."

"Dudes, you ok?" Soos asked, getting me to turn around and see the man standing in his underwear.

"Didn't mean to wake you," Ford offered.

"I was heading to the front porch anyway," I admitted.

"Think in the morning, act in the noon, eat in the evening, and sleep in the night for all are important," Soos said.

"True words. Good night, Soos," Ford said as he pushed himself out of the chair.

Soos turned around and walked back down the hall, leaving us to the silent living room.

"You mind if I join you?"

Sure." I led him outside and hung the lantern on the nail just above the sofa. We sat down on the old sofa and I opened the journal back to the day before my birthday only to realize he'd be missing the beginning. "Uh, you want me to start at the beginning?"

"You don't need to," Ford said, stopping me as I flipped back to the beginning.

"Ok." I flipped back to the page I had left off at and read aloud to Ford, "August thirtieth, two thousand eleven. S four ninety-three. For the last one of the month, S four ninety-three looks laughably childish. Who would've thought I'd miss the hospital like two less than oh-seven? Here I haven't found anyone older then maybe a year though I was sure I just saw Manly Dan tugging along with an ax. I'm trying to find their caretakers but no one seems to be doing that. Oddly enough, these babies seem to take care of themselves. Too bad none of them talk or even have more than a moment of an attention span. I guess I'll spend the next three days or so looking for the journal.

"I don't normally date things that occur during a trip, but today is the thirty-first. Like I have done for the past three years I managed to convince baby Stanford to let me use what could be called a kitchen and make Mabel's Hearts and Unicorns Chocolate Cake. I couldn't find any toys to bake into it this year so it was missing the Hearts and Unicorns part but I might have found that she added three extra cups of sugar instead of just two. I gave Stanford all but two slices, Mabel her's and mine already gone…" My voice fell away as my mind read on. With my wish I pray I find the journal soon and with her's I pray I might find a way to go back in time and prevent this whole mess. I want my Mabel back.

"Dipper?" Ford asked.

I looked up only to realize I had started crying. Crud. I quickly wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and mumbled, "Sorry." It wasn't even me. My Mabel was upstairs asleep. But it was too easy to put myself in Mason's place.

"Don't be," Ford said, wrapping an arm around me to grab my shoulder.

Pinprhqbr C-203 Piqaig tbwl Yacpp swjr az Pjphbwax la a izqt zbftqr. Je apa glwur gtvhb gmeq wjeldcg e tmbz dmibrv, faw usmgbrif, mne eltg jijq wbegwqak Lte Usmgbriffh pq Jgqqeq iius xwm ymyttt zyi. Bui ltifq fgwxi ltrpfkw i jmfpox es amg laysfwj xv nrv fhfj xwwhkzf iu heh xnvl af usi bwimw. Ihfy Qpjrp kmw tzqtbumfs io elt svxuteo, dlt errl avfc xd qazwetjreim, glazkjyk xb jek Iaeopta bv Huknp, sctl xg dedpmkm n ofuff es ipr gzqsu. Sig tnwl iosow lmei "Vupqpv!"

AN: Oh, wow, a ten day ended up on a Tuesday! Hi DA upload, we go up at the same time this time round. Oh well, Shameless Plug Time! If you like my stuff, be it Gravity Falls, Danny Phantom, Code Lyoko or Disney then check out my published book Harley Davis: Teenage Superhero! It's on Amazon and now Barnes and Nobel where you can buy either the e-book or the paperback.