Very Last Gig

(August 10-13, 2017)

15: Ghost in the Sheets

You might call them nightmares, or you might call them prophetic dreams or maybe you might just call them dreams, period. Different strokes for different folks, as they used to say back in the day. A nighttime vision that makes one person chuckle makes another one shudder. Dream, dream, dream, it's always different each time and for each person.

And some say that dreams are omens and warnings, while others call them nonsense. Are they important or just drifting wisps of thoughts gliding through a night-time mind?

Who's to say? The only certain thing is that up in the attic that night each of them had some kind of dream. Some of these, they couldn't even remember the next morning. You know the feeling—the dream experience is right on the tip of your brain, but you can't quite register it in detail. "I had a weird dream last night." "What was it about?" "I don't remember, all I know is it was weird."

Know what that's like?

Sometimes you're not even sure there was a real dream. Maybe just the dream of a dream. Maybe it's all from your life, or maybe the future is the past, and what you see when you turn out the lights is just a reflected glimpse of a captured time . . ..

It gets very complex, all these things about dreams.

But that night, the important thing is that up in the attic, the restless sleepers dreamed, each and all.

The simplest and most direct dream was Tripper's.

Dogs do dream. Brain specialists have wired them up and have monitored their minds—watching a computer simulation of Fido's brain as the fluorescent colors dreams play through it like breezes bending heads of wheat, ripples in sanity.

A lot of times a dog dreams of the chase. Even couch-potato dogs. Something is running from them, and they're after it. Then the dog twitches and its legs paddle and the animal even barks—usually softly, wurf-wurf, puffing out its lips and sometimes whining because whatever it is that's running, it's confusingly slow enough to catch and too fast to grab, always nearly within reach but never reachable. And the dog wakes up and looks sharply around for the whatever-it-was that outran it.

Dogs have guilty dreams, too. Dreams of peeing in the wrong place, of stealing the family roast off the counter, though you KNOW it's WRONG, BAD DOG!

That night Tripper dreamed of darkness.

It terrified him—not because it was dark, but because it was empty. It made no sound, but worst of all, it had no scent. It was just—darkness, filling up the room. The room was Mabel's, but bigger—and he was not a large dog, so the added width, depth, and height made it like a cathedral. Mabel was on the far side, not aware that the darkness was seeping into the room, like a fog, and Tripper was unable to bark and warn her—it was as though his voice had been taken from him. In desperation, he ran.

But the darkness surged, cutting him off from Mabel, and he knew that if it reached her—

He woke with a yip.

The smells told him he was in Dipper's room, but that Mabel was in the bed. She lay on her side. Tripper crept around until he could curl up in a ball, with Mabel's legs and stomach pressing against him.

Don't let anything hurt Mabel.

Bite the dark.

Keep it away.

But he had the shameful feeling that the dark, like a saucy cat, was somehow taunting him.

Mabel's dream, now. Hers was one of the irritating kind. The kind she couldn't quite grasp. Sev'ral Timez featured in it, and it seemed like she and they sang together, but then when it came time to take the bows, well, that's where it got odd. Somehow. She didn't remember how.

At least she didn't remember until late on Sunday, when . . . when it all happened.

Wendy dreamed she was in the shower, angry because she'd forgotten to gather her long hair up inside a shower cap. She hadn't meant to wash it, but now . . ..

The shower was the one in the Corduroy house—only one bathroom, trust Manly Dan to build convenient houses for everyone else but skimp on his own—and for some reason, though it didn't feel scalding, the spray of water was filling the room with fog.

She couldn't find her shampoo. It was usually right there on the corner of the tub, but she couldn't see it or even feel it. But as she fumbled around, someone grabbed her wrist. "Stop it!" she yelled, more annoyed than embarrassed. "Can't you see I'm in here?"

"Wendy?" A guy's voice. And then through the translucent shower curtain she saw a face.

"Get out!" she yelled, furious.

"Why? I just want to know why!"

The voice registered with her then. "Russ?" she asked not believing her ears. "Russ, is that you?"

"You broke up with me," wailed Russ Durham, who looked like a jock but who had the courage of a pigeon. "Why? Take me back, Wendy!"

"I'm engaged to be married!" she snapped, briefly wondering why any former boyfriend would come around to bother her in the shower, when she was naked.

"He's not your kind, Wendy." The voice had changed now. The blurred face on the far side of the shower curtain seemed to be drifting, unattached to a body.

Wendy pulled the shower curtain open just enough to peer into the concealing steam. "Eli Hall? Get out of my bathroom, man!" This didn't even make sense, because Eli had left town three or four years before—

"Gal, come with me. You can cheer me on."

"Stoney, I told you it's over!" Wendy said. Great, now it was Stoney Davidson—wait, wasn't he injured badly in a rodeo accident back in spring of 2015? He had to wear a leg brace now—why hadn't she heard him clomping around—

Voices began to call her name—Nate Holt, Danny Feldman, Mark Epstein (who insisted, "You can't marry Dipper! You and me never broke up!"), and Robbie Valentino sang that stupid song he'd lied about—and all of them were begging, take me back, take me back.

"Get out of my bathroom!" Wendy shrieked at them all.

The fog grew even thicker, and Wendy flailed around to shut off the shower, but she couldn't find the handle. Funny, the bathtub was so much bigger than it should be—she was walking arms out, trying to find the faucet—

Something dark at her feet. She heard a faint voice screaming, "Help, Wendy!"

"Mabel?"

Then she realized that the voice came from the dark circle—and that the circle, a gaping circular hole big enough to swallow a car, was the drain—she had shrunk—wait, two pale hands clung to the edge—

"Help me!"

Wendy knelt. "I gotcha, Mabes!" She gripped the wrists—

"I've got you!"

The voice wasn't Mabel's. It wasn't even human. And the grip was too strong, and the dwindled Wendy felt herself being dragged down into the dark—

"Mabel's going down the drain!" Wendy screamed.

Then she heard Mabel's snore from across the room. And Dipper's breathing, from where he lay in front of the door. And she wasn't naked and wet, but up in the attic, alone in Dipper's bed, and tangled in sheets.

"Oh, man!" she murmured. She had only dreamed of screaming. She didn't even know for sure that she'd spoken, let alone screamed. Anyway, her heart was thudding. She breathed deeply, trying to remember the crazy dream, but the details were already slipping away.

Teek's dream was one he'd had before, back when Mabel was so fretful and unsure about his going way off to the other side of the continent for college while she would remain in California.

It didn't have a plot. Nothing really happened. It was just him walking toward Mabel, who stood somewhere distant, facing him. It might have been a flat field beneath a slate-gray sky, he couldn't tell, but it was some huge featureless place.

Mabel waited for him.

But the hellish thing was that the faster he walked, the more she receded from him. She was yelling, but so far away that he could only catch something about getting her laundry cleaned.

"Wait where you are!" he shouted, though she did not appear to be moving, just standing there, far away. "I've got to keep on moving!"

And the faster he ran, the farther away she was.

Teek became aware of figures on the periphery of his vision, but who they were he couldn't tell. This was new. The times he'd had this strange dream before, he'd been alone—well, except for the distant Mabel, whom he never reached. But now he was sure there were people flanking him.

Annoyingly, he could not focus on them. Worse, when he looked toward them, Mabel drifted away faster and farther. "I've got to catch her!" he yelled.

And then he ran right up against something invisible, but solid as stone. He could see her, distant and small and vanishing—

He pounded on the invisible barrier, and that hurt his hand, and he woke up lying on his stomach. He wasn't standing or running at all—he was prone on the attic floor, and the floor was the barrier—

He'd rolled over in the sleeping bag and off the air mattress. He peeled the bag down—he was in his underwear—and in the dark re-set it on the mattress, then got back into it. He hoped his hammering on the floor had not disturbed anyone—not the others in Dipper's room, and especially not Soos or Melody or their kids.

Not likely. He was over the guest room, normally Mabel's room here. He took deep breaths and listened but heard nothing other than the normal creaks and snaps of an old house settling. After what seemed like hours, he finally got back to sleep.

On the other side of the door, Dipper did register the sound of Teek's fist against the floor.

In his sleep, it sounded like a knock. And in dream, he got up and went to the attic door, but somehow when he got there it was the door of the gift shop, and whoever it was stood outside and knocked.

"It's late," he said, looking out the diamond-pane window in the door. Nothing there but the dark yard. "Is anybody out there?"

He thought he heard a faint voice: "Let me say goodbye, Pine Tree. Please?"

"Bill?"

Funny, but even with the parking-lot lights shining, he could see no trace of the hovering triangle.

"Bill?" he repeated.

"Pine Tree . . . one last time?"

He opened the door.

And something grabbed his shoulders and yanked him out into the night. And something laughed, but not Bill. This was harsher, deeper, more . . . wicked.

Whatever had snatched him up dropped him. Then he saw Mabel, leading against the totem pole, as she had once leaned when she thought she had lost Waddles to Pacifica—she was still twelve in the dream. And then he saw the creature that had lured him down.

Though he was seventeen, nearly eighteen, wham, in his head he was six again, on the sofa in the old house in Piedmont, terrified. His folks had put on a videocassette of an old movie, one they remembered from when they were young, and it was an odd, odd cartoon, but the music was fun.

It was about the Beatles, and how they took a submarine to Pepperland, where monsters attacked. The leaders were called Blue Meanies, bad enough with their horrible yellow teeth and their screeching voices, but the worst—to little Dipper Pines the very worst—were the enormously fat figures in red fezzes. He hadn't known what they were called then—he'd looked up the movie online years later—but they were the Snapping-Turtle Turks.

The thing about them, they were blue but had human heads, arms, and so on. But their mouths were in their bellies, and when they opened them, rows of teeth showed, and the whole top half of the creatures tilted backward—and—

The things had haunted Dipper's nightmares.

And this one picked up Mabel and opened its maw and was ready to drop her in and devour her—

"No!" Dipper roared, and he started toward them, but hands held him back—

"Sh-sh-shh," said a soft voice. "It's OK, Dip. You were dreaming. I don't think you woke Mabes."

"Gah. Was I yelling?"

"Not so much. I thought I woke you up. Here."

Wendy took his hand. It's all right, man. We're all on edge. I had a hell of a bad dream myself. That's why I spread out the blankets here. I don't want to sleep alone tonight. I don't mean fooling around—

—I got you, Dipper thought to her. But the floor—

Eh, I've slept on harder surfaces. Just put your arms around me and hold me, Dip. Keep the bad dreams away. OK?

—Always, Magic Girl. But I think you'll be keeping me safe, not the other way around.

No, I need you, Dip. Mm, this is nice. This is all I ask. Just help me make it through the night.