Every creak and groan of the chairlift made Mabel uneasy.
After their encounter with the trees, Mabel and Candy had raced to the bottom of the hill and informed Grenda of what had happened. While a bit skeptical, the genuine concern of her friends made her agree that it was time to stop skiing and find Dipper.
Given the elevation of the Northwest lodge, a chairlift ride was necessary to get from the bottom of the hill to the main part of the resort property. While she had started to get used to them during their day on the slopes, chairlifts were inherently frightening to Mabel. First, having them nearly crash into you to get on, then sitting with no restraints as you ride forty feet above the ground, and finally having to quickly push off the lift at the top of the hill to avoid getting whipped around and sent back down the way you came.
Now, on top of all of that, she had to fear the trees as well.
"It's a good thing this chairlift is far enough away from the trees that we are safe," Candy noted, echoing back a thought Mabel had been repeating to herself in an effort to calm her nerves.
"I hope you're right, Candy," replied Mabel. She looked over the edge to see a pair of inexperienced skiers drifting down one of the forested runs. "Stay away from the trees!" she shouted down at them. One of them looked up at the teen, confused, and was caught off guard as an errant branch whipped out from the brush. Wrapping itself around his body, he screamed out in terror as he was pulled into the thick of the trees.
The other skier turned back in confusion, but he was already far enough down the slope that he resolved to meet up with his friend at the bottom of the hill. Or so he thought.
Mabel shuttered, horrified.
Their skis stowed at the check-in desk, Mabel, Candy, and Grenda rushed through the lobby looking for Dipper. They had tried calling him out by name, but after Grenda received a disgusted glare from Preston Northwest, they had resolved to search as covertly as possible.
After searching every public area of the lodge, however, the trio decided to return to the vast lobby to regroup. While Mabel had hoped they would be lucky enough to run into Dipper, she knew it was far more likely he was out alone with Pacifica. She pulled out her phone and started to compose a text.
MYSTERY TWINS HOTLINE: Hey Pacifica, is Dipper with you?
"Yo Mabel, what's up?"
Mabel looked up from her phone to see Wendy making her way across the lobby towards her group.
"Wendy!" cried Mabel, "Am I glad to see you! There's something strange going on with the trees here."
While Wendy was fully aware of the bizarre goings-on of Gravity Falls, she was normally a voice of reason that balanced out the more excitable reactions of Dipper and Mabel. Mabel almost hoped Wendy would tell her that she was just imagining things.
"Dude, finally. My dad has been saying stuff like that for months."
"And he knows trees better than anyone," cried Mabel.
Wendy sighed, "Preston Northwest hired my dad to manage the timber clearing for the resort, remember? A lot of spooky shiz happened over the fall but Preston just kept paying more overtime to shut him up. Actually," Wendy paused, looking around, "I think he's over at the lodge bar right now, you should talk to him about it."
Mabel exchanged a look with Candy and Grenda, who shrugged. As long as Dipper was unaccounted for, she might as well start the investigation herself. "Let's go."
The lodge bar, like everything else on the resort property, was a lavishly decorated alcove with top to bottom luxury finishes. Guests in windbreakers and fur coats chatted amongst themselves as gentle piano muzak played from an unseen speaker.
As Mabel and company entered, it didn't take them long to find who they were looking for. Taking up the corner booth was the hulking form of Wendy's father, "Manly Dan" Corduroy. The ginger lumberjack, complete with ax strapped to his belt and a collection of empty cider bottles, was a stark contrast to the rest of the upscale bar and its patrons.
Wendy and Mabel slid into the remainder of the corner both, while Grenda and Candy wandered off to order drinks. Mabel wasn't surprised, earlier she had overheard that the non-alcoholic cocktail menu was to die for.
"'Sup, dad?" Wendy greeted her father. He groaned in response, clutching his head. "Maybe time to take a pause on the ciders?"
"Trying to get my money's worth," he mumbled. Wendy rolled her eyes and turned to Mabel.
"At some point during the fall, Northwest went underwater on his construction loans when there was still timber to clear. With no more overtime pay to offer, Preston gave the lumber crews unlimited bar tabs for the season." Mabel's eyes lit up and she whirled around.
"Candy! Grenda! Put it on Manly Dan's tab!" she shouted across the bar. She turned back to face a frustrated grimace from Wendy. "Right. Sorry."
"Someone might as well get some good out of it," Dan sighed.
"Manly Dan, we've seen some weird things out in the trees today," explained Mabel, "and Wendy says that you've seen them too." Dan looked up, glancing between his daughter, Mabel, and towards the nearby patrons of the bar.
"We lumber folk avoided this part of the woods for decades," he began, leaning in and keeping his voice low. "Whenever someone got too close, there were always accidents."
"What sort of accidents?" probed Mabel.
"Trees falling in unexpected ways that defy gravity. Tools acting up and causing grave injuries. Radios that speak of things you can't imagine. We've always stayed away. The last time someone tried to open a ski resort here, the entire crew disappeared."
"Wait, you never told me that someone tried to build a resort here before," Wendy interrupted, her brows raised in alarm. "Why did you take the job and put our family at risk like that?"
"A job is a job, Wendy," he replied, his voice not rising to meet Wendy's in tone or emotion. She wasn't sure why, but Mabel felt the flatness in his reply pulling on her heart. "It puts food on our table and flannel on your back. It's my responsibility."
"Dude, screw that," scoffed Wendy. "This is why I keep sending you those articles about labor rights that make you punch the car."
"Hey, guys?" Mabel laughed nervously as Dan's face turned beet red, "monster tree problem first, then we can yell at each other. Manly Dan, what sorts of things did you see here this fall?"
"Monster trees about sums it up. Workers got swallowed up only to resurface days later, weird groaning noises at all hours of the night, our tools kept getting destroyed. We only put an end to it once we brought in a bulldozer and had it flanked with two guys using flamethrowers."
Wendy blinked and furrowed her brow as she remembered something. "Wait a minute, was that the day you gave me fifty bucks to take my brothers to the drive-in theater out in Bend?" Dan nodded, and Wendy let out a cry of frustration. "I was begging you for months to have a chance to try out the flamethrowers!"
As Wendy and Manly Dan began to bicker back and forth, Mabel realized that there wasn't much more valuable information to be found in the lodge bar.
'Okay Mabel,' she thought to herself, 'we know the trees are somewhat alive, they're mad about the ski lodge, and we can kill them with fire. Hopefully, when Dipper and Pacifica get back, that information will give him a running start to fix this. I wonder if he's going to be back soon. But not too soon, am I right, Mabel?'
Grenda broke her inner monologue by thrusting a stemmed glass in front of her, filled with a shimmering pink liquid.
"What is this?" she breathed, her focus now laser locked on the glass as she took it.
"They call it a Dandy Unicorn," exclaimed Candy. "It's one part pink lemonade, one part mint syrup, and a heap of edible glitter just shy of the maximum allowable serving by the FDA."
"It's… it's… beautiful."
Following his relaxing mud bath, a decadent deep tissue massage, and a long, uncomfortable conversation with Toby Determined, Stan had found his way to the lodge's restaurant. From floor to ceiling, no expense had been spared on the ornate furnishings and decor, and like all great restaurants, the head chef was a former reality show host.
While he had immediately drawn the ire of the maître d (over his insistence that his fez was a medical device and therefore did not violate the dress code), he had otherwise had a pleasant and uneventful meal. His table was seated next to a window with a stunning view of the entire valley, and he spent the entire sunset chowing down on the largest steak on the menu. While he was excited to spend time over the break with his great-niece and nephew, he would be the first to say that his luxurious afternoon alone had been wonderful.
From behind him, he distantly heard the maître d sarcastically retort "What happened to your medical device?"
"What? What are you talking about?" replied a gruff, impatient voice. Stan turned around to see his twin brother Ford arguing at the host stand. Stan waved his arms to catch Ford's attention. Ford smiled and made his way over to the table, while the maître d shook his head and muttered "two of him?" to himself.
"Glad you could make it, Ford. What'da do, get a taxi up here?" Ford took the seat across from Stan, settling in as he glanced around the fancy restaurant.
"I had considered it," said Ford, "but as luck would have it, the Northwest family had left behind some snowmobiles in one of the garages of their manor. Seemed like an easy enough way to solve two problems at once."
Stan laughed, "Only you would consider free snowmobiles a problem. Anyway, the kids will be glad to see you. They're around here somewhere. In the meantime, you've got to check out the mud spa."
Stan began to take a sip of wine. Ford suppressed a grin - to him, the moment was serious, but provoking his brother into spit-takes had been a guilty pleasure of his since they were children. "Stan, we need to find them and get them out of here as soon as possible."
Stan frowned and swallowed his wine before speaking. "Nice try, wiseguy. I'm on to that one."
"Jokes aside, we really do need to get out of here. Look,"
Ford pulled an elaborate scientific device from his messenger bag. He turned it to show a miniature onboard monitor to Stan, busy taking another glug of wine. "We saw these readings in the Arctic too, remember? They're stronger here than anywhere else in Gravity Falls, and the intensity of the signal is getting stronger. Something terrible is about to happen and everyone here is in danger."
Stan aggressively spat out his wine, drawing the attention and disgust of half of the restaurant. Ford blinked, surprised yet still amused.
"Alright, what do we do now?" asked Stan, wiping his chin.
"We get Mabel and Dipper to safety, we figure out what's going on, and we put a stop to it. You know, the usual."
A sudden burst of laughter came from the neighboring table.
"Come on, guys, I'm serious. I saw a tree crawling through the forest," cried a man to the amusement of his friends.
Ford and Stan exchanged a glance.
"Eric, you need to get a grip," laughed one of his friends.
"Excuse me," interrupted Ford, leaning over to the table. "Eric, is it?" The man looked over, his eyes wide with fear. "You said a tree was crawling?"
"I don't know how else to describe it," the man said, speaking cautiously as his friends continued to snicker back and forth amongst themselves. "It was, like, dragging itself along the ground with its branches. I've never seen anything like it."
"Yeah, because it didn't happen!" joked another friend at the table.
With a huff, Stan stood up. "Okay, that's it." He walked over to the table. "You're going to mock this kid? You've got buck teeth, you look like a duck, and you look like you're lucky to have company at all," he said, pointing to each of the friends in turn. "Everybody good and sad? Great. Let's get going, Ford." Stan turned and stormed his way out of the restaurant.
Ford looked apologetically at the table of friends, all of whom now looked incredibly embarrassed and hurt. "You'll have to excuse Stan, he hates bullies so much he overcorrects and becomes one himself." After receiving no response, Ford awkwardly ran after Stan out of the restaurant.
"Where we headed, Sixer?" asked Stan as Ford caught up with him.
"Let's start with the lobby, we need to find the kids immediately."
As the sun dropped below the tree line, the high-powered overhead lights cast warm halogen light over the icy white snow. Under their glow, while chasing Pacifica down a moderately challenging run, Dipper found himself exhilarated in a way he normally only felt when fighting paranormal monsters. If this was a somewhat safer way to chase that feeling, maybe he would end up jealous of Pacifica's unlimited access to it.
Ahead of them, the run forked into two directions. Pacifica leaned dramatically, bringing herself to a sudden stop and flipping her hair over her shoulder in the process. Dipper followed suit, albeit much less gracefully, and slowed himself to a stop beside her.
"Alright, so we got a Blue Square to the left," Pacifica pointed to a sign, indicating the skill level of the runs ahead of them. "I believe we called it Northern Lights or something generic like that. And then to the right, we've got a Black Diamond, so that'll be more difficult than anything we've skied so far."
Dipper peered down the run. From what he could see, it didn't look particularly frightening. "What's this one called?" he asked. Despite Pacifica's dismissal of them all day, Dipper actually enjoyed knowing the names of the runs, as he enjoyed thinking about how the features of the run inspired the name.
Pacifica didn't respond, however. He turned to see her looking at her pocket map of the ski hill, her face pink.
"Pacifica? What's wrong?"
"It's really stupid," she replied dismissively, "The name."
Dipper laughed. "Come on, it can't be that stupid. What is it?"
Pacifica muttered something into her scarf, too muffled for Dipper to hear.
"What?"
"URSA MAJOR," Pacifica blurted. "It's Ursa Major, okay? My father asked me to come up with name ideas for the runs and you had just sent me a really nice postcard, and so I was feeling generous. I didn't think he'd actually pick it. I'm so embarrassed."
Dipper smiled, flattered that Pacifica thought enough of him and their friendship to suggest his namesake as part of her family's resort. Of course, he knew full well that the second Mabel learned of this, she'd start planning their wedding. But he'd deal with that later.
"Well, I guess I know which one we're skiing next," teased Dipper. Pacifica smirked, quickly bouncing back from her embarrassment.
"Have it your way. Try and keep up." Pacifica pushed off with her ski poles and launched down the run to the right. Dipper followed suit, accelerating as the slope dropped beneath him.
One thing Dipper quickly realized was that he was very poor at judging the difficulty of a ski run on sight alone. The run was dotted with smaller hills that needed to be carefully navigated, as hitting one with enough speed could launch someone twenty feet into the air. Dipper narrowly avoided this by slowing himself at the crest of each of the hills, but Pacifica raced through them at top speed, crisscrossing around them without breaking a sweat.
After the hills, the slope of the run smoothly transitioned into a steeper grade. The end of the run was in sight, and because of the steepness, Dipper found it growing closer at an alarming rate. He made a move with his skis to slow himself down, but the slickness of the packed down snow reduced the amount of friction he was able to apply to his speed. He let out a yell as a reflex, leaning further to try and regain control.
Hearing him, Pacifica turned around to see Dipper disappear into a cloud of powder, his skis flying off in separate directions. She quickly spun herself around, pushing herself with her ski poles to reach where Dipper had fallen.
"Ugh," Dipper groaned. As the powder dissipated, he was left with a half-inch of snow covering his lower half and without either his skis or poles. Overall he mostly felt embarrassed to have crashed in front of Pacifica and wasn't injured, but he suddenly became aware of something in his jacket pocket after it slammed into his chest on impact. Digging it out of his jacket, he found one of Ford's magnet guns, tagged with a note from Mabel:
"For that magnetic attraction -Mabel. PS please don't actually use this on Pacifica this is a joke."
Stashing the magnet gun back in his jacket, he looked up at Pacifica as she approached with a sheepish grin on his face.
"You okay?" she asked, scanning quickly for early warning signs of injury. Dipper nodded. Once she had confirmed he had only fallen, she chuckled. "Guess you couldn't handle the Big Dipper, Dipper.."
He rolled his eyes in response. "Hah, very funny." Pacifica offered a gloved hand, which Dipper took to regain his balance.
"Go grab your stuff, then maybe we should take a break at the lodge to give you a chance to recover from your humiliating fall," Pacifica playfully taunted. As she turned to ski the short remainder of the run to the chairlift, Dipper caught her looking back and smiling.
Suddenly, the idea of the next chairlift ride alone with Pacifica gave Dipper a tinge of anxiety. 'Oh no,' he thought, 'Hopefully Mabel was right about Pacifica liking me, because I definitely like her.'
Dipper did his best to keep the mood and tone of the chairlift ride the same as the rest of the afternoon had been, but now that he was second-guessing everything, he had no idea how well it was working. The creaking of the cable above his head wasn't helping him to feel any more at ease either.
"Did you and Mabel even get a chance to check out the rooms when you arrived?" Pacifica asked, calling Dipper back out of his thoughts.
"No, we didn't. We left our luggage with the front desk and sort of got… sidetracked," Dipper trailed off as he realized that he was approaching a sore subject. Pacifica didn't seem to notice, however, and started to gush about the amenities. Keep it together, Dipper thought to himself. Be normal, be loose, and whatever you do, don't start making any elaborate plans. Easier said than done, as he realized he was spending more time thinking about how to guide the conversation than he was paying attention to it.
"Dipper?"
"Huh?" Again he found himself having missed details of what Pacifica had been talking about. This time, however, it was far more obvious. Pacifica looked a bit hurt. Or uneasy? Confused?
"I-" she started, pausing for a moment to look down at her ski boots dangling beneath her. "I'm having a really great time tonight."
'Does she think I'm NOT having a great time?'
"Oh, me too!" Dipper quickly interjected. "I would have never tried to learn to ski if it weren't for you." Pacifica's eyes lit up, smiling thinly.
"I'm so glad. I really wanted to tell you about all this months ago. You-" she paused again, glancing downwards. This time, Dipper was able to clearly read her face, since it was a face he made to himself in the mirror a million times before. She was nervously second-guessing herself.
When she looked back up, their glances met. Dipper smiled reassuringly, which Pacifica mirrored. Her smile was short-lived, shrinking as she continued. "You just seemed so unhappy in the postcards you were sending me, and I was worried if I didn't get you news of the lodge before you and Mabel made plans for the break, you might not get to come back here until next summer."
"I didn't try to come off as unhappy," Dipper murmured, a hot wave of guilt drifting down his neck.
"To your credit, you did always try to spin things in a positive light. I don't know if you realized this, but three postcards in a row you wrote the sentence "Hopefully next week will turn things around.'"
Dipper let out a hollow laugh. "I really did that?"
Pacifica nodded. "I would have called but you don't have a phone."
"I do!"
"Would you have really opened up about these things with me on a phone you share with your sister?"
"You've… got a point there," Dipper reluctantly admitted. "Actually, speaking of postcards, why didn't you ever tell me you were working at Greasy's Diner?" Pacifica folded her arms in, shrinking herself down slightly.
"Oh. That's… it's not that important."
"I don't know, I think it's pretty cool. I would have loved to have heard about all the people of Gravity Falls you got to interact with. Would have felt like I never left."
Pacifica sighed. "That would have been thoughtful, wouldn't it? I guess there's still a lot more of my selfish family in me than I thought."
"You don't have to beat yourself up ov-"
"But I do! " exclaimed Pacifica. Dipper watched as Pacifica shrunk further into her jacket, casting an ashamed stare off into the distance. "I've spent thirteen years thinking everything about my life was normal, that I understood how the world worked and where I stood in it. But then one summer later and that all changes, because one person finally broke in and let me know it was all a lie. Someone finally saw something good in me that I didn't even know was there, let alone that I should value it. And it felt… amazing."
"And then," she continued, "you left. And I've been trying so hard to hold onto that feeling of worth. We're not as rich anymore, so it was easy enough to avoid burying myself in shopping or luxury. But status still means so much to my parents, and they keep pushing for me to feel the same way. Especially my dad. You heard part of my conversation with my mom, but that's a conversation that's been going on for months. After everything that happened here over the summer, I thought he would have... I don't know... grown a bit like the rest of us. Not at all. If anything, he's gotten worse now that he feels pressure to restore our family's name."
Dipper felt awkward at the realization that he had no basis of reference for how Pacifica was feeling. His parents were, at least as far as he was aware, relatively well adjusted and largely encouraged him and his sister to be who they wanted to be. Pacifica's home life was designed to appear idealistic and aspirational, but clearly, there was no thought given to how the pressure involved with that sort of high-status lifestyle would affect a thirteen-year-old girl. But while Dipper found himself at a loss for what to say, he was incredibly proud of the growth and determination Pacifica had shown.
"When I saw the job opening at Greasy's I thought 'Maybe this will help me find what Dipper saw in me for myself.' My parents have no idea I work there, I've had to lie about taking all sorts of golf clinics, tennis seminars, basically anything to convince them I'm still trying to be like them."
Pacifica stopped, once again second-guessing. The sound of the creaking chairlift and skiers calling out to one another from below filled the gap.
"I think I didn't tell you any of this," she continued carefully, "because I wanted to find what you saw in me by myself. To be sure it was really there, and to learn how to cultivate it on my own."
"That's great, Pacifica," said Dipper, "I'm really glad you're seeing it."
Pacifica swallowed. "Me too, because there's more to it than that. I wanted to be sure that something else I was feeling wasn't just… you know, attached to someone telling me I was a good person for the first time in my life."
The chairlift had almost reached the top of the hill, the lodge now fully in view. Dipper's mind raced as he tried to divine the meaning of what she had said. "Something else… what?"
Pacifica opened her mouth to continue but didn't have an opportunity to speak. With a creaking groan, the chairlift slowed to a stop. While their particular lift was lucky enough to stop next to the final tower before the drop-off, they were still suspended over fifty feet in the air.
"Ugh, I'll call maintenance," Pacifica grumbled, pulling her phone out of her pocket. "Oh, that's a lot of missed messages from Mabel."
"Really?" asked Dipper. "What does she need?"
Pacifica paged through the messages, frowning. "I really hope this has nothing to do with the chairlift," She handed her phone over to Dipper, who began slowly reading through the texts.
MABEL/DIPPER: Hey Pacifica, is Dipper with you?
MISSED CALL: MABEL/DIPPER
MABEL/DIPPER: Pacifica this is important!
MABEL/DIPPER: SOMETHING SUPERNATURAL IS HAPPENING TELL DIPPER
MISSED CALL: MABEL/DIPPER
MISSED CALL: MABEL/DIPPER
MISSED CALL: MABEL/DIPPER
MABEL/DIPPER: There better be a romantic story for why you're too distracted to pick up
Dipper groaned, handing the phone back to Pacifica. "Why-" he had started to complain, before catching himself. 'Why didn't she check her phone all afternoon? Maybe because she was enjoying herself. Take a hint and shut up.'
Instead, he took stock of their surroundings. They were isolated on a chairlift, held dozens of feet in the air, and only a short distance from the lodge. On Pacifica's side of the lift, a support pole for the lift was within arm's reach, with a metal ladder attached that continued on towards the ground. Pacifica noted Dipper's gaze on the support pole and chuckled nervously.
"We're not that far from the end of the lift," Pacifica noted. "Maybe we should just stay put."
From below came a panicked scream. Dipper and Pacifica looked down to see two snowboarders being pulled into the tree line by long, gnarled branches. Despite their best efforts to resist, even using their boards to try and create a small amount of leverage, they eventually disappeared into the dark woods, falling silent.
"Oh we're so sued," Pacifica gasped.
"Worse than that, look!" Dipper pointed to a group of branches that appeared to be crawling out of the tree line. They snaked into the open terrain of the ski hill, pulled themselves upright, and allowed their branches to fan out around a raised trunk.
"What's happening?" Pacifica cried.
"The forest is reclaiming the ski hills. By force."
Quickly, Dipper turned his attention to his boots, quick-releasing his skis. "We got to climb down now," he commanded. Pacifica nodded and followed suit, allowing her skis to fall to the ground below and slide off down the hill.
"Can you reach the ladder?"
Pacifica stretched out her hand, wrapping her gloved fingers around the ladder. "Yeah, but getting over there is another story," she replied cautiously.
"It's this or getting dragged into the woods!"
Pacifica gulped, pulling in her legs to stand on the seat of the lift. Carefully, she extended her left leg to reach one of the rungs of the ladder, her arms split between holding the ladder and the lift.
Her boot made a dull metal thud as it connected with the ladder. Taking a centering breath, Pacifica forced herself to let go from the chairlift and push her center of gravity over to the support beam.
As she did, her boot slipped.
"Aaaigh!" she cried out in surprise, her right arm swinging toward the ladder. She grasped at it, her smooth gloves slipping along the metal edge hopelessly until she managed to grip tightly to a rung and halt her fall.
Meanwhile, her sudden departure from the lift sent it off balance. Dipper suddenly found himself further from the support than when he started, but that concern could wait. "Pacifica! Are you alright?" he called out.
Pacifica clung to the ladder for dear life, terrified. She couldn't manage a response but attempted to give Dipper a pained smile as at least a small signal of her safety.
"You've got to start climbing down now!" he called out, watching as another tree pulled itself out of the woods and established its roots. Another skier drifted down the run directly into the new tree, finding herself pulled up by arm-like branches into the canopy.
Shaken, Pacifica started to inch down the ladder one rung at a time, not allowing more than one limb to be in the air at any given time. It would take her time to get down that way, Dipper noted, but he couldn't blame her caution.
He, however, had to make the same leap. He sized up the gap, taking a deep breath, before feeling the pain of a bruise on his chest. His eyes widened in recollection, pulling the magnet gun from his jacket pocket.
"Yes!" he breathed, "Thank you, Mabel." He charged up the gun, aimed for the support tower, and jumped.
Below him, unaware of any change in Dipper's strategy, Pacifica watched as Dipper flew from the chairlift with reckless abandon.
"DIPPER!" she cried out, just before Dipper's magnet gun fired a blue beam of attractive light, ferrying Dipper down the tower effortlessly. Pacific's terror turned to annoyance. "You could have mentioned that earlier!" she shouted down to him.
The magnet gun pulled Dipper right up to the tower, from which he was able to leap off and fire the gun again, rappelling his way to the ground. Once his boots crunched into the packed snow, he stashed the magnet gun away and watched as another tree pulled itself into the clearing. This one set up camp less than thirty feet from the support pole.
Dipper studied the tree as it contorted itself, twisting and pulling to orient itself vertically. The tree was unlike any he had ever seen - while it cosmetically resembled the pines he was familiar with seeing around Gravity Falls, the bark looked more like rotten meat than tree bark, and the branches appeared to be multiple tiny hands that pulled out in every which direction, constantly grasping and stretching. He shuttered at the horrific sight, just as Pacifica reached the bottom of the ladder.
Pacifica opened her mouth to comment once again on the magnet gun, but Dipper grabbed her arm and started running. "No time, complain later," he managed to shout out.
Right behind them, another tree grasped its way out towards them, wrapping itself around the support structure. Using the metal pole as a trellis, the tree pulled itself to the top of the pole and began to spread its roots down the cables, using them to pull tighter and tighter.
The strain was too much, and with an alarming thwhip, the cable snapped. Dipper looked up just in time to see another lift swinging directly into where he and Pacifica were standing.
"Look out!" he shouted, pushing Pacifica down and out of the way. The lift swung past, narrowly missing Dipper's knit cap. He pulled Pacifica back to her feet and they continued running up the hill, slowed only by the awkward gait forced on their bodies by their rigid ski boots.
Once at the top of the hill, the two of them turned around, watching as the entire run became swamped with the mutant trees. Within moments, it was hard to believe it had ever been a ski hill at all, so thick with growth that pulsed with an eerie symmetry and moaned out into the quiet night.
Pacifica turned to Dipper, tears in her eyes, "I swear we didn't do this on purpose."
"I believe you," Dipper replied. The lift support towers, the last remnants of human construction that could be seen in the forest, fell one by one, their lights flickering out as they toppled into the woods.
They didn't take long to linger on the scene, as the trees continued to spread out, now clawing their way towards the lodge. Dipper and Pacifica dashed through the courtyard, reaching the entrance to the ski pro shop. Adorned with a sign that read "Downhill From Here", Dipper figured that the pun name was probably a lot more amusing under less dangerous conditions.
Immediately after pushing their way into the shop, they slammed the door behind them. Thinking quickly, Pacifica grabbed a pair of skis off a wall rack and wedged them into the door handles, just in time for a branch to slam into the door.
She retreated backward, watching along with Dipper and a collection of confused resort guests as branches began to snake across and completely cover the windows, encasing everyone inside.