Bridges
(Late July, 2014)
Chapter 14: Out of the Past
"Dipper?" Mabel asked from the back seat. "Hey, Dipper?"
"Shhh," Wendy hissed. She whispered, "He fell asleep, Mabes. Let him rest while he can, OK?"
"OK," Mabel said. They were halfway to the old logging road. She turned to Blendin, who sat behind Wendy and next to her, and asked him, "So how are we supposed to deal with this guy?"
"I-I-I don't really know," Blendin confessed. "But-but he's m-messed up the timeline badly. He was f-fated to die in an early Civil War battle, b-but he made some sort of deal with a demon and g-got exempted from death. B-but there are always catches with demonic double dealings—hey, I d-didn't s-s-stammer on th-that—oh, rats! Any w-way, if you can figure out what the details of this deal were, you have a chance." He thought for a few minutes. "I can investigate how this b-began. His real name might help you. Are you s-sure of the address that he gave your b-brother? It just might be where his people really lived. Let me see what I can do. I'll j-join you at the b-bridge. Don't cross it until I see you again!" He took out his time travel tape measure, set it, triggered it, and flashed out of existence.
"You guys know some weird people," Wendy said.
"Yeah, but some of them are dreamy," Mabel said. "Like Mermando. But not Blendin."
"Definitely not," Wendy agreed.
Beside her, Dipper leaned against the window and dozed.
And dreamed . . ..
The Mindscape was always a monotone world, sometimes sepia, sometimes a faded hazy blue. Any colors that showed up tended to be muted.
Except a certain bright yellow, in a triangle shape. Who now sported a tall black top hat and a . . . multicolored bow tie, a little reminder that his molecules and Dipper's had mingled at a crucial moment.
Bill Cipher leaned idly on nothing and whacked a red rubber ball with a bolo paddle. It made thwacka-thwacka-thwacka sounds. His voice was casual: "Up against an Immortal, huh, Pine Tree? Tough."
"Bill! Did you come to help or just to gloat?"
"Kid, it's not a dilemma for me. I can do both at once! Hah!" The ball came back on its elastic and shot past the paddle. "Darn it, I still can't go past six hundred and sixty-five. Well, well, well, you got mixed up with an Immortal. You really put your foot in it this time, Pine Tree! I hope you like butter, because frankly you're toast. On your own, that is. That's the gloating. For the second part, yes, I can help. But WILL I?"
"I don't know."
"BZZZZT! Wrong answer, kid! Try again!"
Dipper remembered that Bill always played by his own rules, which consisted of one: There are no rules. He said, "Uh—yes. Yes, you will."
Bill glared at the bolo paddle, and it burst into flame and vanished. The smoke coalesced into his walking cane, and he grabbed it. "Right you are! OK, I can't be a mine of information, but I happen to have a nugget or two about your Lazarus guy. You got to understand a few things: First, in exchange for not dying, he traded his emotions, just because a certain, well, let's say 'demon,' wanted to see what human feelings felt like. Second, and this is key, nobody can completely surrender all their emotions—the deep ones are still inside, but dormant. Third, why. Fourth, if you can get him to connect to his former life and his family and where he came from, the old homestead, all that sentimental jazz, you just might awaken his human feelings and snap the spell—if he really feels anything, he's broken the contract. Long shot, but what other shot you got? Fifth, if you don't, he's gonna do something nasty to you—or to Red or to Shooting Star, and in about twenty-four hours he'll be loose on the rest of Gravity Falls. Sixth, if any of this helps, and if you're feeling generous, I still need gold. A Troy ounce would be super nice."
"Wait, what?" Dipper asked. "What did you say about third?"
Suddenly Bill was wearing a baseball cap, gold with an embroidered Navy-blue B, on his apex and carried a bat over his, well, not shoulder, but let's trigonometrically say his side a-b. Taking a practice swing while squinting his one eye, he replied, "Why."
Dipper shook his head, but nothing cleared. "Why what?"
Bill smacked the bat against his nonexistent cleats. "No! What's on second! Why's on third!"
"Who?"
Bill swung and connected with an invisible baseball. It made an audible CRACK! and an invisible crowd roared. "Who's on FIRST, kid! Geeze, keep up, will you?"
"Bill!"
The cap and baseball bat poofed out of existence. "Hey, it was funny to your grandparents! All seriousness, that's all I can tell you, Pine Tree. Except I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what?"
"Second base! Hah!"
And that made Dipper so mad that he—
—woke up. "Gah!"
"Oh, you back among the conscious?" Wendy asked. "We're almost there."
Dipper turned around. "Blendin, can—wait, where's Blendin?"
"Better to ask when is Blendin!" Mabel said with a grin.
"This isn't some kind of dumb baseball joke, is it?" Dipper asked.
"Chill, dude," Wendy said. "This Blendin guy has gone back in time or some biz to find out something about Jeremiah Lazarus. He's supposed to meet us again at the bridge."
"Great," Dipper muttered. "He's supposed to be the Time Anomaly removal guy! I could do the research and let him handle the tough stuff."
"Yeah," Mabel said, "but you know he'd mess it up."
"There's the bridge," Wendy said, her tone low and troubled. The Dodge Dart jounced to a dusty stop only a few feet away from the river bank and the crumbling old covered bridge, its entrance tree-pierced. As the teens got out, Blendin reappeared in a flash of greenish-white light, wearing a long gray coat with fourteen brass buttons and gold braid on the sleeves. Also, his head was on fire.
"Whoa!" he said, patting it out. "Dang it, my hair's all frizzled! I always foul that part up! Am I smoking? No? Wow. I spent over three weeks in the past and just got back from Manassas, Virginia, July 21, 1861. Th-this is a Confederate colonel's uniform I'm wearing. Just a minute, I'll change." He flashed out of existence and then immediately back in, this time wearing his usual nondescript light-gray jumpsuit and white boots. "There, that's a little better. All right, that was the first Battle of Manassas, b-better known as Bull R-run. That's where the man you knew as Jeremiah La-Lazarus sh-should have died in action. But he didn't. Because he struck a deal with B-Bill Cipher."
"That three-cornered rat!" Mabel exclaimed.
Dipper closed his eyes and sighed. "Bill Cipher. An interdimensional demon. Jeremiah got to be exempt from dying. Yeah, I know that part already. What else did you find out?"
"His r-real name is Jefferson Lassen. His d-dad was a minister in a Shenandoah Valley t-town. It wasn't the one he t-told you, but I tracked down the church in a little p-place called Harrisonburg. I saw a tin-tintype photo of him in their parlor, wearing the uniform of the First Regiment of the Army of the Shenandoah. His m-mother and dad were very p-proud of him. So when I was sure of the name, I flashed up to 1975 and checked the Confederate records on microfilm, and in what I think was the original timeline, he d-died in the first Battle of Bull Run. See, I knew that the person who apparently got his back broken here on that night was a deserter and that his failure to be in the battle caused major disruptions in time. B-but then, knowing who he really was and that he was listed as killed in battle, I went back to 1861, and I was there in the Confederate camp at roll-call on the morning of the b-battle, and Lassen was absent without leave. He didn't make his appointment in—where's the place? S'mores?"
"That's a dessert," Mabel said.
"Samarra," Wendy said, surprising Dipper.
"That's it! His appointment in Samarra! His rendezvous with Death. He ducked out on it. I did some more snooping and I found he and his friends had a kind of clubhouse in a natural cave when they were teens, and on the walls of that cave I found Native American pictographs of Bill Cipher. Eventually I tracked down one of his old buddies—that was in 1911, and he was an old man then—who told me that Jefferson had figured out you could call on this triangle demon and make him your s-slave. That's what he thought, anyway. They started to do that one night, but his friend got s-scared and ran out. He always th-thought that Jefferson went through with the ritual. That was just before the Civil War broke out."
"And he joined up on the losin' side," Wendy said.
"Well, his p-parents weren't slaveholders, but they were very p-patriotic toward Virginia. They were FFV's."
"What were his parents' names?" Dipper asked.
"Dip, is that necessary?" Wendy asked.
"Could be," Dipper said. "You talked to them, Blendin, so you must know."
"Um, y-yes, it was the Reverend Robert Lassen and Mrs. Martha Segars Lassen. And he also had a younger sister, Lavinia. S-she was fourteen in 1861. But, um—"
"What?" Mabel asked.
"But none of them survived the war. Not even the sister. They were all dead by January of 1865."
"So—why were you wearing the uniform?" Dipper asked.
"B-because I t-tracked down his s-sergeant just as the b-battle broke out and asked if all his men had mustered. He thought I was a big-shot colonel and t-told me that Lassen had v-vanished from camp and wasn't there, and he thought the man had d-deserted. But I couldn't find his time-signature anywhere. Then I knew for sure he'd changed the timeline."
"And now if we don't stop him—"
"He, he'll get out into the w-world, and more and more will go wrong with time until it all implodes in a super-paradox. Or else I may lose my j-job and g-go back to the Infinitentiary. B-but I'll be what h-help I can if you can s-stop him!"
"Thanks," Dipper said. He took a deep breath. "You're really not coming with us?"
"I ca-can't," Blendin said miserably. "See, I'm the one fouled up. I've already crossed five timelines with him, and th-that's the limit, s-so if he and I get close enough to t-touch, and if one of us touches the other one, we'll both be annihilated and there'll be a terrible rip in Time and Space and th-things will get horribly jumbled up. I mean, imagine a horde of Confederate soldiers charging into modern-day Gravity Falls! Or, or, you and Mabel could wind up caught in the deadly crossfire between the Union and Confederate lines at Bull Run! Or all of a sudden, the Confederates could have machine guns and airplanes and defeat the Union, and it would be an awful mess, and Time Baby would blame me!"
"Why would he blame you?" Mabel asked.
"Just because it's my fault! It's so unfair!" Blendin gulped and wiped sweat from his face. "B-but I did s-show up to straighten things out just after your encounter with him and the Gaunts and the toad monster, and that should c-count for something. That crossed his timeline with mine for the fifth time, right here, in 1862. Just after you three left the area, I saw him getting up, broken neck and all-he s-said it was his back, but it was high up on his spine, really, and he looked horrible, so I immediately put a Class 1 Limited Single-Person Time Enclosure around the town, focused on him."
"What does that mean?" Wendy asked.
Blendin swallowed. "He could never get out. It didn't affect anybody else, only him. He's stuck inside his own private time-bubble eternity that's not much bigger than the town. On this side, it ends where the bridge starts. And he's bound there!"
"Forever?" Dipper asked. "Hey, that works for me! What's the problem?"
"Well—not forever," Blendin admitted. "I, I didn't have the power for th-that. It lasts for a hundred and fifty-two years. And one day. Most I could do."
"Whoa, dude!" Wendy said. "Then it's gonna expire—"
"Just after midnight tonight," Blendin said miserably.
Dipper closed his eyes. "But you're a time traveler! And you couldn't show up and tell us this a year ago, maybe?"
"L-look, I have my hands full with my d-duties! I didn't even become aware of this until a week ago, in my timeline, when the notice to investigate came to my desk. All this sounds like I've worked on it for years, but really in my terms it's been just a few days. And the reason I'm just now involving you people is that I had to wait until now because technically, I'm supposed to be on vacation! My first one in ten of your years!"
"Aw," Mabel said, "and you wanted to spend it with us!"
"Well, c-close to you," Blendin said. "I'll stay here and, uh, guard your—this is a car, isn't it? Your car." He waved. "Good luck, guys!"
"We're going to need it," Dipper said grimly. "Come on."
He led the way to the horribly dilapidated bridge and wondered what would be worse—plunging through the rotten boards and dropping forty feet to certain death on the rocks below, or renewing their acquaintance with Jeremiah Lazarus.
To him it seemed pretty much like a toss-up.