I do not own the show GRAVITY FALLS or any of the characters; both are the property of the Walt Disney Company and of Alex Hirsch. I make no money from these stories but write just for fun and in the hope that other fans enjoy reading them. I will ask, please, do not copy my stories elsewhere on the Internet. I work hard on these, and they mean a lot to me. Thank you.

X Marks the Day

(August 26-31, 2017

1: In the Realm of Dreams

Billy Sheaffer's sisters teased him about his eagerness to travel back to his magic place. Fair enough, yes, he was as excited as he would have been the day before Christmas, OK?

Mr. and Mrs. Pines had told Billy their travel plans. For weeks now, on the family calendar in the kitchen, Sunday, August 27, bore a great big red X that Billy had put there with a permanent marker. And then for days it was, "Please, Mom, can I? Dad, can I? Please?"

Billy had visited Gravity Falls a few times, and every time he'd come back with excited tales about strange and, yes, even magical places, people, and things. His sisters and parents marveled at his imagination and liked the way his visits gave him a high that lasted for a month or more.

They were also glad that Billy finally had close friends. Oh, the twin girls were friendly enough with Dipper and Mabel, who lived down the street, and the Sheaffers liked the Pines family just fine—but Billy had really bonded with the Pines twins.

And—fortunately, his sisters were good-natured and not at all mean—to tell the truth, he felt a bit of a crush on Mabel, as anyone could tell. She had turned him down in a friendly way, and now he had a kind of a girlfriend, a girl his own age named China (though she wasn't Chinese) who liked the same kind of things he did and who didn't mind at all that he had one prosthetic eye. She even thought that was kind of cool.

So now his attitude toward Mabel had become more buddy-buddy and less romantic. She was so upbeat and cheerful that it made staying friends with her easy.

Anyway, Dipper had invited Billy to come up to Gravity Falls with Mr. and Mrs. Pines for the double occasion of the twins' eighteenth birthday and, coincidentally, Billy's twelfth. Mr. and Mrs. Sheaffer proved a bit reluctant and took some persuading—but they finally agreed that since this was a big moment for Dipper especially, Billy could celebrate his real birthday up in Gravity Falls with his friends, and the Saturday after that, September 2, he'd have a birthday party back home in Piedmont with his family.

So the deal was that on Sunday, he would ride up to Gravity Falls with Mr. and Mrs. Pines. Dipper had told him he was welcome to take the spare bed up in the attic of the Mystery Shack—which had become one of Billy's favorite places in the world—and that he could go to the wedding on Thursday. Soos was actually closing down the Shack for the occasion, which made it really special.

Anyway, that would be on August 31. That same evening, Dipper and Wendy would leave for their honeymoon, and the Pines parents would drive back to Piedmont with Billy. Man, though, first he'd have four full days in Gravity Falls! He was so geeked about that!

Though, of course, there was the other thing, the one that still worried and, to be honest, scared him.

The Bill Cipher thing.

Maybe for those reasons, on Saturday night Billy fell asleep there in his own bed in Piedmont, California, and dreamed about the Mystery Shack.

It was one of those dreams where real places seemed unreal. His dad had told him once that sometimes, in his dreams, he wandered through the house and kept finding doors that opened into rooms he didn't remember and that really didn't exist. Yeah. Little like his dad's architecture dreams.

Anyway, in the dream the Mystery Shack loomed bigger than in real life. It was a clear night, with a full moon in the eastern sky. Yellow light shone in the Shack windows. Everything was incredibly still and quiet.

Somehow as Billy walked up to the gift-shop door, he realized that no one was home. He hesitated at the door, wondering whether he should even knock—and then he heard laughter from somewhere around back.

He went around by way of the museum porch. There the "new wing"—that's what they called it—led off to the left from the main part of the Shack. The wing was fairly long, with a nursery, a room for Abuelita, a spare room, and a playroom for both kids, as well as its own bathroom. Billy walked all the way around it and saw an enormous oak tree that seemed to have sprung up from nothing since his last visit. Anyway, he didn't remember the big oak, or the swings hanging on ropes from a high, thick branch or—

The two kids who were laughing as they swung in great looping arcs. At one instant, they would be so far in the air behind the branch that the ropes looked parallel to the ground, and then with a fast swoop, they'd go that far forward, from Billy's perspective with their heels above the moon, until the two practically lay on their backs twenty feet above the ground, laughing their heads off.

"Dipper?" Billy asked, because the guy's laughter sounded like his friend's.

Whoa! The two swings froze in mid-air, both kids, guy and girl, turned, looking back and down at him. "Hi!" the boy said.

He didn't know the girl, red-haired and just about his own age. And the guy—looked like Dipper, but different, too. And younger, again about Billy's age.

"Just a sec!" the girl called. The two of them stepped out of their swings—fifteen feet up or more!—and walked casually down the air as if they were coming down a big set of spongy, soft stairs. The two swings, now empty, slowly came down until the ropes were vertical and the seats still.

"Who did you think I was?" asked the boy.

"Uh, Dipper. Dipper Pines? He works in the Shack?"

"Well, close," the kid said. "I'm Dippy, and I live in there. This is my buddy, Wendy."

"Hey!" the girl said, and she did sound like—and now that Billy looked at her, dressed like—Wendy Corduroy. But she was so young! "What's your name?" she asked.

"Um, I'm Billy Sheaffer. I'm from, uh, Piedmont, California."

"Bet you're dreaming!" Dippy said. "Everybody who visits us is dreaming."

"Am I?" Billy asked, surprised.

Wendy looked at Dippy. "Hey," she said quietly. "Do you think—" She held up her hands and did something strange. She touched thumb-tip to thumb-tip, index finger to index finger, and looked through the triangle she'd formed at Dippy.

As though she'd asked a real question, Dippy said, "Um, nope. Billy's not the right shape."

"Anyways," the girl, the young Wendy, said, "I'll bet he'd like a turn in the swing!"

"Hop on, Billy!" Dipper said. "We'll give you a push."

He somehow was in the swing, without remembering even walking over to it. And Wendy yelled, "Hang on!" She shoved him—

And, wow! The swing swooped him way, way up. The moon seemed to sink as he rose, and then just for a moment he felt as if he were hanging there—and then whoosh! He felt himself drop down, down, and then go up the other way, backward, and there below, grinning up at him, stood Dippy and Wendy. Dippy yelled, "You can't fall!"

He felt as if that were true. Somehow the swing held and protected him. He felt the speed and the swoop in his chest. This is just like flying!

Wendy got into the other swing, waited, and Dippy gave her a push at the right moment, and there she was, over to Billy's right, keeping pace with him. She gurgled with laughter, and that made Billy laugh, too.

And then somehow, he was waving goodbye. He left them behind and walked down the Mystery Trail.

Through the woods and then to the place where once he had come so close to shaking hands with that strange statue.

It was gone. A metal cage replace it. Inside it, and spilling out through the bars, a yellow light glowed.

"Is that you?" Billy asked.

"He's almost not there," said a whispery voice.

Billy looked around. No one.

"Up here."

Ah, someone—no, a dragon—no, a kind of lizard-like ghosty thing floating up above, just under the tree canopy. "Who are you?"

"You'll eventually remember this and know me. Bill Cipher is almost not here. He's almost entirely inside you now."

"I can't find him inside me."

"That will come. It will take years. One day you will wake up and think, 'Why, I'm me, and I'm Bill Cipher!' And then you will remember this and know who I am. I'm here to tell you not to be afraid. Nothing much will feel different. And you have friends."

"It's on my birthday, isn't it?"'

"Early in the morning. There is just the smallest, tiniest part of Bill still in Dipper's heart. It will leave him. It will be part of you, but you won't even feel that. One thing that will result—you and Dipper will always be friends. Any time that he needs help, you will be there for him. And when you need help—"

"I can call him."

"Wake up!"

"What?"

Someone was shaking his shoulder. "Come on, champ! Time to get ready."

Oh. His dad. "What time is it?" he asked.

"Past seven."

"Why is the moon out?"

His dad sat on the edge of the bed. "I think maybe you were dreaming, Billy! Remember what today is? You've got to get up, shower, have breakfast, and get ready for—"

"The trip!" Billy said. "Yeah, I was dreaming about Gravity Falls! The shack looked real funny, and I saw Dipper and Wendy, but they were both my age, and we were swinging on this old tree, and it felt like flying—oh, gosh, I have to get ready!"

He got dressed in comfortable clothes, a yellow tee shirt and black shorts, ate a big sausage-and-pancake breakfast, and he and his mom checked his suitcase one last time to make sure he had packed enough socks and underwear and all.

Mr. and Mrs. Pines parked their RAV4 at the curb, came in and had a cup of coffee with Mr. and Mrs. Sheaffer, and then Mr. Pines asked, "Ready for the long drive?"

"Yeah!" Billy said.

Laughing, Mr. Pines carried his suitcase out and stowed it. Then Billy got into the back seat of the minivan, fastened his seatbelt, and sat back.

"It's going to be strange seeing Dipper and Wendy get married, isn't it?" asked Mrs. Pines.

"A little, I guess," Billy said. "But, you know, they're old enough."

"They keep telling us that!" Mr. Pines said good-naturedly. "OK, let's see—it's eight in the morning. By about twelve-thirty or one, we'll stop for lunch in the town of Yreka. Know the story of how it got its name?"

Billy didn't, so Mr. Pines told it—in a way that made Billy laugh a lot. It began with some people in a nameless mining camp opening a bakery shop and painting the word BAKERY on a canvas sign, hanging it backwards so the paint sort of leaked through . . . .

". . . so," Mr. Pines said, "this old-time prospector showed up in town and saw the sign and said, 'That-there is a heck of a bad name fer this-here town. Yrekab? How in th' tarnation kin a feller pronounce that? Why don't y'all take and cut off that cussed B from th' end?'"

And so on. The story probably didn't have a lot of truth in it, but the way Ales Pines told it was very entertaining.

Mrs. Pines, currently in the passenger seat, kept glancing back at him and smiling. Once, in a strange kind of happy-sad voice, she said, "This really takes me back."

Mysteriously, Mr. Pines interrupted his tale to sort of sing just one cheerful word to his wife:

"Grandchildren!"