A/N: And we're back! A huge thank-you to everyone who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed.
Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Gravity Falls and The Park are not mine. Again.
This chapter's soundtrack is The Dark Forest by John Williams.
Dipper had no idea how Lorraine had gotten them this far.
Quite apart from the fact that she'd kept him wrapped up in tarp for most of the journey, she'd taken so many risks in the last few minutes that it was a wonder that they hadn't both been eaten. First, she'd made her way back across the Nameless Bridge and into the other roadway tunnel; their safehouse supposedly could be found somewhere on the southern coast of the island, not far from the motel (or so Lorraine had claimed), but instead of just taking the road that would supposedly lead them right back to where they'd started, she'd taken the scenic route.
Apparently, "scenic" was Solomon Island slang for "potentially lethal": as soon as they'd emerged from the tunnel, she'd left the path and gone sprinting downhill into one of the channels that divided the north-eastern tip of the island. On the upside, the tarp at least spared Dipper the indignity of getting wet, but it had also brought them dangerously close to the tentacled things patrolling the waterways until Lorraine had trudged through the shallow waters of the channel until they'd waded out into deeper waters. For a moment, Dipper was convinced that she actually meant to move north beyond the Fog – which would have been suicidal, considering the only thing north of there was the Atlantic Ocean – but eventually, they came to the foot of a bridge.
Apparently, this towering monstrosity was the island's only connection to the mainland apart from an occasional ferry, and nobody had been able to safely cross it for months.
"That's exactly why the Orochi Group set up an outpost here," Lorraine had muttered feverishly, whilst stopping on the rocks under the bridge to catch their breath. "Even the Council won't mess with them. As long as we keep close to Orochi territory, we'll be safe… as long as we don't get too close."
Dipper, who had no idea what the Orochi Group was supposed to be or why it was so dangerous, could only nod wearily and hope that Lorraine wasn't going to get them both killed. As they crept out from under the bridge's colossal shadow, he could just about recognize the shapes of unmarked black vans and gun-toting figures lined up on one end, blockading the road ahead; even if the Fog hadn't been impassable, the roadblock would have kept all but the most desperate refugees at bay. Dipper was tempted to call out to them as they hurried past, but a quick glimpse of the figures on patrol instantly stilled his voice before he could even try to speak: something about those unsmiling figures in their glistening black uniforms instantly set his teeth on edge.
From there, Lorraine had waded through the shallows around the ruined bulk of Kingsmouth Airport, a lowly one-runway strip surrounded by tumbledown chain-link fences. Apparently, Orochi had another base up here and had nearly half the airport under its control, meaning that nobody ever got to this northernmost tip of the island unless they were willing to enjoy a very frank exchange of views with heavily armed corporate security goons, or alternatively, swim. And swimming came with its own share of risks, for in the deeper waters just off the airport, more vicious monsters lurked and spawned.
It took less than ten minutes for Lorraine to half-wade half-swim around the airport with Dipper in her arms, but it had to be the longest and most nerve-wracking ten minutes of his entire life. Out there, so close to the Fog, visibility was almost zero, and there was no way of knowing if those ominous-looking shapes in the distance were just rocks or more of those tentacled things. Every so often, a low groan would echo across the waters, and Dipper would be left frozen with terror in Lorraine's arms, hoping against hope that she wouldn't be crazy enough to walk towards it.
Eventually, though, they'd emerged on the other the side of the airport, just next to a tiny smattering of islands and shoals. But the journey wasn't over yet: Lorraine was still on the move, headed towards a horseshoe-shaped stretch of land tentatively identified as Fletcher Bay.
So far, the beaches here didn't look any better than the rest of the island: almost all of them were infested with lumbering, waterlogged zombies, accompanied by more of those tentacled undead things, most of whom were busy herding the walking dead from one stretch of the beach to the next. For some reason, the zombies didn't attack the shepards, and Dipper was tempted to wonder if these tentacle-things were just a stronger kind of zombie – after all, they were just walking corpses with a few fishy traits slapped on… but then he heard them speaking, issuing commands in a language that Dipper couldn't even recognize, much less understand. Whatever they were, these creatures were way too clever to be ordinary zombies.
And where there weren't zombies or their shepherds, the beach was dotted with dozens upon dozens of weird, fleshy pods spaced out across the sand.
Dipper wanted to ask about them, but as they drew closer, the monsters unexpectedly answered his question: in one corner of the beach, some of the smaller tentacle-things were doing a rather complicated-looking dance around some of the zombies, slender chest-tentacles jabbing violently at their rotten grey flesh; not too far away, the zombies who'd already undergone this procedure were already stumbling away, suddenly looking a good deal fatter than usual. And then, at the opposite end of the beach, more of the processed zombies – their backs now swelling up like revoltingly meaty balloons – were kneeling down on the beach, their bodies warping out of shape until they finally formed the same pods Dipper had seen… and not too far away, one of the pods was springing open to reveal a brand-new tentacle-thing.
It's like wasps, Dipper realized. They lay their eggs inside the zombies, the zombies wander around for a bit until they're ready, they become incubators, then the tentacle-thingies hatch and start the whole thing all over again with the next gang of zombies. Is that what this whole zombie apocalypse is about? Or do they want something else? I mean, it's not as if anything about this island makes much sense but bigger conspiracies sound like they should be in play…
"Mom?" he whispered. "What are those tentacled things?"
"They're called Draug, Callum: Viking nightmares brought to life. Now hush for a minute, I need to concentrate…"
In the distance, a small town could be seen just uphill from the putrid beach; beyond the bulwark of shops, restaurants and tourist attractions set closest to the sand, gloomy-looking houses stood in sombre rows leading up the hill, and the forest beyond. Even from here, Dipper could clearly see that the streets were infested with zombies, most of them greedily feasting on corpses left in the street.
However, on some of the grassier street corners, some of them appeared to be digging determinedly at the soil, looking for something that Dipper couldn't see despite the impressive trenches they'd already dug in the grass verge. Whatever they were up to, they were doing so with the approval of the Draug: all the teams of zombie diggers were accompanied by a lumbering Draug overseer with a coral swordhand.
What's under this island? What do the Draug really want?
But as they continued onwards, Dipper couldn't help noticing that the two of them weren't actually headed towards the town; in fact, as Lorraine went on wading through the shallows, he realized that she was moving towards the absolute left-hand edge of the beach, where the zombies and tentacle-things were thinnest on the ground. And, as they splashed out of the beach and onto dry land, they proceeded not uphill into the town, but towards the forest beyond it.
Under the tarp, Dipper grimaced and stifled the urge to swear. Grunkle Stan had been told that there were survivors in this town; if Lorraine was heading deeper into the wilderness – again – then his last best chance of getting help had just gone down the plughole. But could there be another way out? Was there any way of placating the crazy woman?
"Mom," he whispered, trying not to cringe at his own delivery, "Where's this new hiding place?"
"You'll see soon, Little Duck. It's a surprise…"
Oh no, she's being overly sweet again, I'm screwed.
"But it's somewhere in the forest, right?"
Lorraine just smiled mysteriously and planted a soft kiss on the back of his head. Dipper nearly groaned in despair; if she felt safe enough to give him a modicum of attention, then she probably thought that he wouldn't be able to escape. On the upside, she was slowing down now, so they were probably just far enough from the danger to consider themselves a tiny bit safer than before.
"Mommy, why can't we just go home?" he asked, in what hopefully sounded like a diplomatic tone of voice.
"Home?"
"Yes, our old house. I mean, we shouldn't have to keep running from safehouse to safehouse, should we? I mean, we live here, don't we? So why don't we go back to the house I grew up in and…"
Dipper trailed off. It was bad enough that they were currently stuck in the middle of the single most dangerous place on the entire eastern seaboard, worse that they were wading uphill from a zombie-infested coast into a forest with countless unknown threats lurking in every shadow; somehow, the fact that Dipper was having to lie through his teeth to a woman who probably couldn't even recognize the real world somehow made it a thousand times worse. By now, he didn't know if he should be afraid of Lorraine or just feel sorry for her, but either way, he couldn't keep up this lie for much longer, and even if he could, Lorraine's smile was rapidly beginning to fade – not with anger, but with an all-too-familiar expression of fear and grief.
"We don't have a home here anymore, Callum," she said quietly.
"What?"
"It was sold thirty years ago, after… after what happened. I don't think anyone wanted to live there, though, so they had the place bulldozed and replaced."
"But where have we – er, where've you been living for all this time?"
They'd slowed to a crawl by now, but Dipper wasn't sure if that meant they were truly safe: Lorraine's fearful expression was beginning to look downright haunted, and her tone was beginning to falter a little.
"I… I don't have a home anymore. I've had a barracks for a little while, when I had time to sleep. Most of the time, if I could get a chance, I slept in the field: in hotels and inns when I was lucky; when I wasn't, in ruined buildings, haunted houses, forests, war zones." She smiled sadly. "I haven't been back in years: I came back twice, first in 2002 and 2006. First time, I slept at the Overlook, back when it was still completely abandoned. Second time I slept at the Franklin Mansion, told Eleanor I was lost and needed a place to stay for the night, and…"
Suddenly she was blinking away tears. "I didn't meet her when I was still living here, never had occasion to, so she didn't know who I was. If she did, she wouldn't have been so nice to me; she'd never have let me stay if she'd known what I-"
She took a deep, shuddering breath.
What did you do, Lorraine? Why do you think everyone hates you? Come to think of it, did any of that really happen, or are you just telling me what was in your dreams or whatever? Gosh, it could be either of them in this messed-up place. But what have you been doing since you had to leave?
"Are you okay?" Dipper asked out loud.
"I…" Lorraine brushed a few errant tears from her cheeks and visibly forced a smile back on her face. "I'm fine, Callum. Mommy was just being silly, but she's alright now. Let's keep moving, now: it's not too far from here – just through the tunnel and a little further along."
And with that, they began picking up speed again…
Mabel groaned in despair.
She'd finally managed to find a path through the forest, through the mountain path and out into what looked to be the safest stretch of road on the entire island, but the trail had gone cold by now: no sign of the glowing footprints could be found anywhere, and if Lorraine was anywhere in the area, there were so many possible destinations in the next few hundred yards that Mabel would be hard-pressed to search them all before dawn. There was the huge stretch of bog to her right, there was the fenced compound in the forest to her left, there was the smattering of houses dotting the coast, the huge ugly construction site in the distance…
For a moment, a very low and very unpleasant part of her wanted to wave the white flag, to admit that she'd never find Dipper, that Lorraine had already gotten away with him, and she'd never see him again – and even if Lorraine was hiding in somewhere nearby, Mabel wouldn't be able to get anywhere near the two of them without getting Lorraine's attention.
But then sanity returned. She couldn't give up, not now and not ever: she'd been up against worse odds than this, hadn't she? She'd defeated a horde of gnomes, she'd uncovered the mystery behind Gravity Falls and the forgotten president, she'd golfed her way through an army of Lilliputtians with Pacifica, she'd triumphed over those snooty unicorns in the enchanted glade, and she'd even managed to lead Dipper, Wendy and Soos in escaping from her own paradise-gone-rotten. If she could deal with all that, she could deal with anything. She had to go on.
In desperation, she veered off to the right, downhill towards the small encampment on the shores of the bog – and promptly slammed headlong into a woman in a hazmat suit heading in the opposite direction. For the next few seconds, the two of them were tumbling helplessly down the embankment, until they finally crashed to a stop in what appeared to be a camp set up right on the edge of the bog. Immediately, Mabel leapt to her feet, grappling hook at the ready – though judging by the woman's clumsy efforts to haul herself upright.
For a moment, the two of them could only stare at each other. Normally, Mabel would have been the first to say hello, but Dipper's absence had put a dampener on her usual high spirits; also, hazmat suits never meant anything good in her books.
Eventually, the woman in the hazmat suit cleared her throat, and stammered, "Y-you're not supposed to be here, kid, this area's strictly off-limits to… to…"
She stopped, as if pausing for breath, and seemed to sag. "Who am I kidding?" she muttered.
"Are you okay?" Mabel asked.
If anything, the woman in the hazmat suit looked even gloomier. "Not really. I've been stuck on this hillside for nearly half a year, the rest of my team are dead or worse, I've barely gotten any sleep in this suit because I'm too scared to take it off, and my last visitor threatened to kill me if I screwed up. And I think I've screwed up. Frankly, if it didn't violate protocol, I could really use a hug."
She took a deep breath. "So, how are you doing?"
In spite of herself, Mabel couldn't help but offer her a friendly grin. "I don't know if you'll believe me, but I've actually had worse days than this."
Even through the hazmat suit's opaque visor, she could clearly tell that the woman was giving her a sceptical look. "How's that?" she asked.
"Well, the end of the world, for one thing. We called it Weirdmageddon. Long story."
Mabel could almost hear the woman's brow wrinkling in consternation. "You know what?" she said wearily. "I'm not going to question it: literally everyone who stops by here seems to be tougher than me, and after all the weird shi- stuff I've seen, I don't have any incredulity left. It's all used up by now. For all I know, maybe you did live through the end of the world." She laughed nervously. "Better than the alternative."
She coughed, and then extended a trembling hand. "My name's Marianne Chen."
"I'm Mabel Pines."
They shook hands; even with several layers of hazmat suit, Mabel could tell that Marianne wasn't getting anywhere close to calming down; her hands were shaking compulsively under her gloves, and the slightest sound from beyond the camp left her twitching with anxiety (and given the occasional rattle of gunfire and chorus of ghostly moans from the distance, there was no shortage of sounds for her to panic over).
"So," Marianne asked. "What brings you here? I mean, I can tell you're not one of the Bees: it's hard to smell anything through this suit, but after a while, it's hard not to notice the smell of honey on them. I'm guessing you can't shoot lightning out of your hands or play around with probability or use your own blood as a weapon or come back from the dead, right?"
"Well, I've never tried…"
But Mabel was starting to wonder; Marianne was basically describing Lorraine in a nutshell. How many of these people were there? Were they all crazy and after people's little brothers, or did they actually have day jobs in this messed-up world?
"But if you're not a Bee, then what are you doing out of the shelters? From what I hear, every survivor on the island's been hiding in camps and fortresses ever since the Fog arrived. I don't even think they're sending teams out in the hot zones for supplies and ammo anymore, not since the Bees started bringing in provisions. What are you doing out here? Come to think of it, how did you get out here?"
"Easy: I've got a grappling hook."
"Fair enough, can't argue with that…"
"As for what I'm doing out here, I'm trying to find my brother. You haven't seen him, have you? He's about yay high, brown hair, red sleeveless jacket, baseball cap with a pine tree on it..."
Once again, it was impossible to see what was going on behind Marianne's visor, but Mabel had the strangest feeling that her eyes had lit up in realization.
"He was here," Marianne gasped in astonishment. "Barely half an hour ago! One of the Bees told me to keep an eye on him while she scouted out the path ahead, told me she'd throw me into the bog if I didn't do as I was told."
Mabel's heart leapt inside her chest. "This Bee," she whispered urgently, "Was she wearing a white uniform with a lot of blood on it?"
"That's her."
"What happened to them?"
Marianne sighed despairingly. "You brother ran off less than an hour ago; as soon as he realized that there was a friendly settlement on the other side of those woods back there, he made a run for it."
"Then he's free?"
"No: just a few minutes after that, I saw the Bee running back up the road across the Nameless Bridge; she had the kid back in her arms. Well, she had him wrapped up in this old tarp, but you could tell it was a kid under there if you looked carefully enough: his shoes were sticking out from under the tarp. She was headed for the other tunnel leading to the northeastern end of the island."
Now it was Mabel's turn to sigh despairingly. "Do you have any idea where they're headed?"
"They didn't say anything, so no. I'm sorry, but there's a lot of places they could be hiding out there. Maybe the hippy camp just south of the tunnel exit, maybe the junkyard, maybe the airport… who knows? I mean, the airport sounds like the only place where they wouldn't be bothered by Morninglight weirdos or walking scrap-metal monsters."
"…scrap-metal monsters?"
"Just some of the things I've heard the other Bees talking about. Supposedly, there's a junkyard just north of Kingsmouth; it's owned by this crazy hillbilly guy by the name of Edgar Stone, "Scrapyard Edgar" everyone calls him. Bit of an outcast, never liked anyone much except for his guard dogs. Anyway, his yard's meant to be infested with monsters built from bits of his scrapyard, and he's been calling in the Bees to keep the situation under control."
Mabel's eyebrows crashed skywards into her hairline. "This guy… is he some kind of inventor?"
"Well, everything I know about him I know secondhand, just like everything else on this island, but yeah, I guess he is an inventor. A few weeks ago, a Bee came by here with this crazy wrist-mounted gadget he called a Quantum Gauntlet, zapped the unliving crap of those Filth-things down there in the Bog. Supposedly, Scrapyard Edgar designed and built the gauntlet from scratch even though he barely even understands basic engineering principles much less quantum mechanics."
Mabel's mind fizzed. Somehow, this gross little island had its very own Old Man McGucket.
She sat down heavily on the hillside, trying to think of what to say next. Eventually, she settled on her speciality – namely, purest improv: "Do you think this Scrapyard Edgar guy could make something that could help find my brother?" she asked.
"I think Bees are a little bit beyond even him. But if you want my advice, you'd best try looking for anywhere safe and out of the way: this Bee, whoever she is-"
"Lorraine."
"Right, Lorraine. Whatever she's trying to do, she really cares for your brother, wants him protected at all costs. If she's going anywhere, it's got to be someplace where she's certain no harm will come to him – and someplace where nobody will think to look. Right now, her best options will be here, the airport, or maybe one of those out-of-the-way spots southeast of here."
"What kind of spots?"
"Well, I here there's supposedly a place in the forest just south of here; according to the Bees, none of the monsters can get to it. It's… protected by someone or something."
"Something?"
Marianne shrugged. "Don't look at me, Mabel; all I heard was "protected." Now, I wouldn't go there if I were you: it's still in the Blue Mountain region, just south from here, but it's right in the middle of some very dangerous territory. I don't think you're getting anywhere near there without some kind of vehicle."
But by now, Mabel was officially beyond being deterred. "Well," she said briskly, "we'll just have to make one. What have we got?"
"This was a CDC camp, Mabel: we don't have dozens of motorbikes in storage racks or ATVs up the ying-yang. The most we've got are the all-terrain spherical suits, but those aren't going to be much use if you're thinking of crossing the Moon Bog; that stuff down there – the Filth – it'll seep through anything, including the suit."
"These all-terrain suits… what are they like?"
"They're, um… well, they're a bit on the fanciful side. I don't know what idiot packed them, but they wouldn't have been any good for the Moon Bog, even before the Filth contaminated the place. They're meant for crossing bodies of water and observing whatever's going on underneath the surface, a little like a glass-bottomed boat. Each suit is basically a sealed sphere with a one-hour air supply and a pump: you can either inflate the internal bubble for buoyancy or deflate it for temporary submergence. You get around by "walking" inside. It's just like-"
"A hamster ball," Mabel whispered, immediately enraptured.
"Yeah, pretty much. But you probably won't wanna try that out, not when-"
"I get a human-sized hamster ball! AT LAST!"
"Just a little bit further, just a little bit further…"
By now, Lorraine's mad journey had taken them through the tunnel south of Kingsmouth, right back onto the lonely coastal region where Dipper and the others had first arrived on the island. Of course, where the two of them were going was still anyone's guess, as Lorraine had insisted on keeping Dipper silently cocooned in the tarp until they were well past Kingsmouth – at least until such time as he was certain that they were out of earshot.
As they hurtled down the hill from the tunnel exit, Dipper caught a brief glimpse of the hellish red glow cast upon the Overlook Motel shining from somewhere to the left; they were so close to where they'd started, too. If by any chance the others were still holding the fort at the motel for whatever reason, Dipper was just thirty feet from freedom; all he'd need to do was find an opportunity to wriggle out of Lorraine's arms. Maybe, if he could just get back to Mabel, Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford, they might be able to find some way of talking sense into Lorraine… assuming of course they hadn't all gone looking for him.
But of course, Lorraine's grip was too tight, and the tarp too thoroughly wrapped around him. All he could do was watch helplessly as the motel drifted away, the faint glow receding into the distance as his captor galloped onwards into the darkness.
Then, as they finally reached the bottom of the hill, Lorraine took a sharp right turn, heading for one of the houses bordering the woods. At first, Dipper thought she intended to break in, which didn't strike him as a good idea considering that several of the houses they'd passed so far had already been broken into by persistent zombies. But then Lorraine vaulted effortlessly over the picket fence on the opposite side, and suddenly they were leaving the property entirely. Nor were they headed for any of the other houses along that lonely, isolated stretch of Solomon Road. They weren't even headed for the kindergarten to the left of the crossroads.
They were headed into the forest.
Back when they'd been on the front doorstep of the Black House, Dipper had thought that the woods had looked dark and uninviting, even as a possible escape destination: they'd towered over the nearby houses, their gargantuan trees stretching furiously into the night like claws tearing at the Fog-shrouded stars, the shadows between them looked vast enough to lose an entire army in, and there was no way of telling just how far the forest went on for before you finally reached the foot of the mountain just visible in the distance; back then, fleeing into the forest. But now that the gaping mouth of the forest was opening wide to swallow them whole, Dipper realized that if anything, it was even worse than first impressions suggested.
Just past the first layer of trees, the forest was plunged into an eerie silence, the sounds from beyond muffled so thoroughly that it seemed that the rest of the world had vanished. All the usual noises of Solomon Island – the rattle of gunfire, the moans of zombies, the faint explosions, the screams, the war-cries, the distant bellows of strange beasts – all were instantly smothered. And smothered seemed like the most accurate word to use, because there seemed to be something curiously dead about this forest.
Also, much like the mountainside forest they'd been travelling through not long ago, it was dark. Dipper had thought he'd gotten used to Solomon Island's particular midnight gloom, almost starless and moonless thanks to the Fog… but in here, it was even darker: it was like wearing sunglasses at night. Instantly, Lorraine held out her free hand and conjured a tiny ball of flame to light the way, allowing Dipper a tiny view of the forest around them.
He quickly saw that the ground was sloping and uneven, the first inklings of the mountain high above them, and the forest floor was a mess of roots, rocks, and God only knew what else; if he tried to flee now, he'd immediately trip over and land flat on his face. Somehow, though, Lorraine navigated the whorls of roots effortlessly without so much as stumbling, so this probably wasn't a fitting spot to make a run for it.
Unlike the forests on the slopes of the Blue Mountain, there didn't seem to be much in the way of animal life to be found either, another reason why it was so quiet. Then again, that wasn't the only odd thing to be found: here and there, strangely-shaped creepers were strung between the trees and the ground, and as they continued deeper into the forest, Dipper couldn't help but notice a strange green tinge to the air – visible even in the dark. Indeed, as they got deeper into the forest, it actually seemed to get brighter as the green tinge grew more pronounced, as if there was literally something glowing in the air around them. Of course, it wasn't enough to illuminate anything beyond silhouettes in the distance, so Lorraine kept the fireball in her hand lit.
And then, just as it seemed as if the unearthly silence of the forest might be too much for Dipper to bear, new sounds began filtering in from within the forest: low, wooden creaks from the surrounding trees; the subtle gurgle of a stream of something too viscous to be water working its way downhill; a procession of strange scuttling noises; and most alarmingly of all, a noise that sounded uncannily like something large and unfriendly clicking its teeth together at high speed.
"Mom-"
"Shhh!" Lorraine hissed urgently, her face a mask of barely restrained terror. "Not so loud, they might hear us!"
The bottom promptly dropped out of Dipper's stomach. "They?" he echoed in a hoarse whisper.
"The hiding place is just up ahead; they won't follow us up there, but we've got to get to it first, and they're a lot faster than the demons, the zombies, the Draug, and the Wendigos. Don't worry, Callum: Mommy won't let any of them hurt you."
For once, Dipper couldn't bring himself to ask what this latest threat was; the urgency in her voice instantly silenced any queries he might have had, and the terrible staccato click-click-click murdered any further attempts at speech. Considering how casually she'd taken out anything that had gotten close to attacking them, he really didn't want to see what had gotten her so spooked. Then again, he didn't need to: his imagination was filling in all the blanks no matter how desperately he tried to silence it.
As they headed up the embankment, the trees began to look stranger: strange lumps had clustered around their roots and trunks, accompanied by more of those weird-looking creepers. With the forest even darker than the rest of the island, Dipper couldn't tell what these shapes were even when Lorraine's handheld fireball swept past them, but he thought they looked a little like insect cocoons… though he wasn't sure he wanted to know what kind of bugs made cocoons this big.
Without warning, Lorraine juddered to a stop, and then pointed at one of the trees up ahead. He quickly noticed that this gigantic specimen looked to be even bigger than most of its fellows, an absolute monster of an oak at least forty feet high and nearly seven feet thick, its limbs broader than the trunks of the surrounding trees. At first, Dipper had no idea what she was trying to tell him about it, but as his eyes adjusted to the sight-straining mixture of gloom, glowing air, and open flame, he eventually realized that something was dangling just off the trunk of this monstrous tree; he couldn't be sure in this light, but it looked like the rungs of a rope ladder. Blinking in astonishment, Dipper followed the ladder up the length of the tree, until at last, he saw Lorraine's perfect hiding place.
Sitting in the barren branches of this enormous tree was one of the biggest treehouses that Dipper had seen in his entire life. Built on a vast wooden platform built into the limbs of the oak, it was the size of the average suburban garage and might very well have crossed the line into being an actual house in its own right if there'd only been glass in the windows.
"There you are," Lorraine whispered excitedly. "Your very own treehouse, all to yourself."
"But how-"
"Shh! No questions for now; we've got to get up there first."
She immediately started towards it, moving briskly across the uneven ground… and then Dipper heard the clicking sound again – much closer this time. And as Lorraine hurried towards the still-distant shape of the rope ladder, something scuttled out from behind one of the neighbouring trees, and he finally recognized the source of that nerve-wracking noise.
It was a little smaller than a rhinoceros, looked somewhat like an insect, but also something like a reptile: it trundled along on a quartet of muscular legs, but you could see more insectoid legs protruding from its flanks, waggling in the air; it had a dense, almost fleshy body, but here and there, the scales looked more like carapace than anything else; it had dozens of little eyes studded across its sloping face, almost reminiscent of a spider, and yet two of the bigger ones looked as if they'd been borrowed from a chameleon; at the highest point in its snout, it had a tentacular proboscis snaking out through a crater-like orifice in its face… and yet, nestled in the ghastly folds on the underside of its skull, Dipper thought he could see teeth. Most distinctively of all, this monster clearly had wings like those of a moth, huge enough to fan out behind it like a peacock's tail, but judging by the ragged holes torn through them, it probably wouldn't be up to flying anytime soon.
Not far behind it, several other such creatures began scuttling out of the darkness – dozens of them.
Lorraine must have noticed them, too, because she immediately put her head down and flung herself uphill towards the ladder without even bothering to fire off a potshot at the advancing monsters. In that moment, every last drop of her attention was focussed entirely on getting Dipper to the treehouse.
At first, Dipper thought it wouldn't have been much of a contest, because the creatures could only amble across the forest floor like wounded bears, their massive bodies too ungainly to move at speed. But then, just as he was beginning to think that they'd reach the ladder with a good ten-second lead, one of the monsters put its head down and catapulted itself downhill towards them with one colossal flex of its otherwise useless pinions. In the space of a single second, it had cleared more than fifteen feet, and it wasn't done moving yet – and neither were its fellows.
It wasn't long before their head-start evaporated in a flutter of wings, and Lorraine was reduced to sprinting frantically uphill with the monsters hot on her tail, only managing to stay ahead of them through magic: whenever one got too close, she would clench her eyes shut and suddenly flicker out of existence – briefly plunging Dipper into darkness – before reappearing a few feet away, just far enough to confuse the beasts and gain another head-start. But it couldn't last forever.
Somehow, they just managed to get to the ladder barely a few seconds ahead of the pack. However, instead of climbing it herself, Lorraine abruptly plucked Dipper out of the tarp and set him on the highest rungs of the ladder she could reach.
"What are you-"
"Go!" Lorraine hissed, urgently. "I'll keep them busy while you get out of reach – hurry!"
Dipper almost opened his mouth to demand why Lorraine was so eager to get herself killed all over again, but then he noticed the swarm of monsters hurtling towards them, a horde of at least fifty of the creatures scuttling relentlessly towards them at a pace that would have left the gnome colossus in the dust. Dipper let out a muffled squeak of alarm and immediately began scurrying up the ladder as quickly as he could.
For the next few seconds, all he knew was a desperate ascent up a wildly swinging rope ladder, lurching back and forth like a pendulum as he struggled to keep going upwards, just so he could stay out of reach of the monsters. It wasn't until he was almost twenty feet in the air that he finally felt safe enough to peer over his shoulder at the chaos going on at ground level.
Below him, Lorraine turned to face the oncoming swarm, hands bristling with electricity as lightning bolts scything through the front ranks of the monsters. Unfortunately, Lorraine's powers – however she'd gotten them – definitely didn't make her invincible: with a muffled whoosh, one of the monsters rocketed across the ground from the side, knocking her flat on her face; as she struggled to right herself, another monster shot in from the front, sending her somersaulting backwards through the air; another hurtled in from behind her, proboscis raised high – and Dipper heard Lorraine cry out in pain as the daggerlike appendage speared her clean through the stomach. And suddenly, all of the monsters were charging at once…
Dipper looked away, frantically scurrying towards the safety of the treehouse above, and didn't stop moving until he'd finally tumbled onto the vast wooden porch of his newest hiding place. Gasping for breath, he peered over the edge of the platform, hoping that Lorraine might be mounting some kind of last-second recovery – only to see something vaguely recognizable as a human head tumbling out of the monstrous dogpile at the foot of the tree. The creatures were now ripping her to shreds, grasping her by any appendage their brutish paws could grip and lunging away, slowly tearing her apart.
For all intents and purposes, Lorraine was dead all over again. What happened now? Was there any set limit to how many times she could come back from the dead, or could she spring back to life from this too, gradually piece herself back together again until she was ready to follow him up here – and if so, how long would that take? How much freedom could Dipper get out of this?
Enough to escape, maybe.
He craned over the porch railing, hoping against hope that he might be able to find some route to freedom now that the monsters appeared to be calming down again. Unfortunately, whatever they were, they didn't seem interested in leaving. They weren't circling the tree or trying to tear down the ladder, but they were still milling around the forest in worrying numbers, and while some of them were retreating down underground burrows set in the roots of trees, there were still enough to make escaping a dangerous prospect. After all, if those cocoons and creepers strung across the trees were any evidence, this was their territory.
Dipper weighed his odds: he had more than enough speed and stamina to stay ahead some of the nastiest threats in Gravity Falls, from McGucket's mechanical Gobblewonker to the Henchmaniacs… but in those cases, he'd at least had a decent head-start before the threat moved in on him. He at least had a chance to escape.
If he were to climb down the ladder and start running, he wouldn't just be starting off in the middle of the lion's den, but right between the lion's jaws: without Lorraine's supernatural speed, he'd be surrounded and torn to bits in seconds. He could try to leap onto one of the other trees and make his way out of the forest from above… but without Mabel's grappling hook, he wasn't going to cross the gap between the treehouse porch and the nearest of the neighbouring trees. All he'd earn by doing that would be a broken leg or two if he was lucky, and a broken neck if he wasn't.
He was trapped – exactly as Lorraine had wanted. She'd said this was the perfect hiding place, and too late, Dipper realized that she'd been planning not just against potential rescuers, but against him as well: the monster-infested forest would keep the white-uniformed weirdos at bay, and it would also keep him from escaping until she got back to the treehouse.
Dipper hauled himself back from the edge and sat back against the wall of the house, fuming silently; in that moment, he was angry with just about everyone and everything within reach of this forest – angry at the forest, angry at the monsters, angry at Solomon Island, and most of all, angry at himself. He'd gotten himself caught out of curiosity, he'd missed his chance at escaping so many times it would have been funny if it hadn't been so infuriating, and worst of all, the one chance he had taken had ended up with him being lured off the path and having to be rescued by his own kidnapper.
And yet, strangely enough, he couldn't spare an ounce of anger for Lorraine. He just couldn't bring himself to be angry at her, even though he knew full well that he had every reason in the world to be mad at the lunatic who'd kidnapped him.
Indeed, as the minutes ticked by, Dipper realized that he was getting worried that she might not show up again, which made no sense to him: if Lorraine died for good, then that would just mean that he might get a chance to escape if he took some time and waited for an opening. Why should he care about Lorraine?
The answer was distressingly obvious: she was all he had.
Mabel, Grunkle Stan, and Grunkle Ford were either stranded back at the motel or searching the island for him; in any case, they weren't likely to find him until they'd scoured the place from top to bottom and decided to search the forest. The white-uniformed men wouldn't risk looking in here, and besides, they didn't care if Dipper lived or died; all they wanted was Lorraine. Right now, there didn't seem to be anyone else around who was remotely interested in keeping Dipper safe except for the woman who'd kidnapped him in the first place.
Yes, Lorraine was mad as a hatter. Yes, the whole coming-back-from-the-dead angle creeped the hell out of him. Yes, she was violent, irrationally angry, and probably had an arrest warrant out on her for a very good reason. And yes, Dipper didn't even know what she wanted to do with him, if she even had a plan apart from pretend that he was her son.
But right now, she was all he had. And as crazy as she was, at least she cared.
Is this what Stockholm Syndrome feels like?
Could be, Dipper, could be…
Fifteen minutes later, there was a series of muffled explosions from the forest below as Lorraine began hammering her way through the swarm of monsters.
She didn't stick around to admire her handiwork, though; as soon as she'd cleared a path to the treehouse, she simply flung herself onto the ladder and began scurrying up it as fast as possible before any more of them could come pouring out of their burrows. Unlike Dipper, who'd hauled himself onto the porch with barely enough breath to spare, she practically flung herself over the lip of the platform and sat down beside Dipper, almost giggling with exhilaration.
"We made it, Callum," she panted excitedly. "We're safe now. None of them will look for us here; nobody's ever gonna separate us ever again."
"Oh." Under the circumstances, there wasn't much that Dipper could say apart from that. After a bit of thought, though, he managed to ask, "What were those things down there?"
"Ak'Ab. Ancient Guatemalan war-beasts brought to Solomon Island by the Mayans during the Darkness War."
There was a pause, as Dipper tried to reconcile the likelihood of Viking fishmen, Guatemalan bug-things, and Mayans all somehow ending up on the same damp island in the North Atlantic. Eventually, he gave up on trying to understand it and asked, "How long do we need to stay here?"
"As long as we need to. Eventually, the people chasing us will be forced to take a step back and rethink things: they can't just keep throwing more troops into the wilderness, not with the island as dangerous as it is. Sooner or later, they'll back off… and then we can make our move. There are some secret roads they won't be able to follow us down, and once we're in Agartha, we'll be out of reach. We can go anywhere from Agartha, Callum, everywhere and anywhen: they won't be able to find us in a million years, no matter where we go. Wherever it takes us, we'll be safe: nothing can touch us there – not the Council, not the Bees, not the Filth, nothing. We can start again, Callum, make things the way they used to be!"
Oh great, even better! I just had to ask, didn't I?
Dipper wracked his brain for a moment, trying to find something in Lorraine's excited babble that made the slightest bit of sense in context. Eventually, he settled on Agartha: from the reading he'd done back home, Agartha was supposed to be a magical land hidden deep within the Earth's core, a key component of the legends of a Hollow Earth. Back in the dimension he'd known, it was still believed to be a myth, but in this world… well, unless Lorraine was going out of her mind again, it was real enough to be used as a backup hiding place. Unfortunately, even if it was safe as she believed, it only put more distance between him and the others, and probably sent his chances of being rescued plummeting to somewhere around zero.
And in the meantime, Dipper had more questions than ever.
"But why are they chasing you in the first place?" he asked.
Lorraine's face turned pale and haunted again, her jubilation evaporating on the spot.
"You don't want to know about that, Callum," she whispered, the old hint of anxiety back in her voice again. "That's all in the past now. We're together again, and nobody's going to separate us this time; that's all that matters."
Dipper barely managed to suppress a despairing sigh. He could tell at once that he wasn't going to get any answers on the subject, no matter how insistently he asked, and Lorraine's rather shaky mental state probably nixed any further questions… so there likely wouldn't be much point in asking if any of Lorraine's current problems were anything to do with the abandoned amusement park a few blocks away.
Then, just as he was starting to wonder if her current state of gloom was going to last, Lorraine plastered on a fresh smile, got to her feet, scooped Dipper into her arms and headed indoors.
The interior of the treehouse was, if anything, even more surprising than the outside: this wasn't just a couple of wooden columns under a plywood roof; this wasn't like any of the treehouses that Dipper had witnessed over the course of his short but colourful life. This place was made of thick, sturdy planks that looked as if they could have stood up to a tsunami; the front door was on working hinges; the place even had a corrugated iron roof. Inside, the walls were lined with hand-drawn maps, strange diagrams, even a few laboriously sketched illustrations of monsters (some of which Dipper had already seen elsewhere on the island).
Most baffling of all, the main room was also occupied by a large couch and a coffee table. Given that this treehouse was somewhere in the ballpark of forty to fifty feet off the ground, Dipper could only guess as to how the builders had managed to get the furniture into the building… but then, he was already trying to figure out how they could have possibly managed to construct this damn thing in the first place when the forest was infested with monsters.
"Home sweet home," Lorraine giggled. "Well, not really, but it's home for now."
"Who built this place?"
"The League of Monster Slayers: this is their clubhouse."
Dipper's heart leapt. At long last, there was a tiny shred of hope on the horizon: somewhere on the island, there was another faction that knew how to fight and kill the monsters infesting the place, and if they were tough enough to build a treehouse out here in these hellish woods, they had to be tough enough to go toe-to-toe with Lorraine. True, they didn't know that he was out here and in need of rescuing, but they'd probably want to pay a visit to their secret base at some point… and as soon as they realized Dipper had been kidnapped, they'd be on his side in a heartbeat. Already he could imagine the battle royale that would ensue as the League of Monster Slayers fought Lorraine to a standstill until at last they could rescue him from their…
…their…
…clubhouse.
Lorraine's choice of words had been a little bit on the specific side, come to think of it: she'd said "clubhouse." Not "secret base," not "headquarters," but "clubhouse." Suddenly feeling a little less confident, Dipper looked again at the various maps and drawings, realizing for the first time that they looked suspiciously as if they'd been drawn by children.
"Uh, mom? Just how old were the members of this League?"
"Oh, usually about ten to fourteen years old. Why?"
Dipper's heart sank. From personal experience, he knew that kids could be a lot tougher and a lot more capable than most adults suspected, but unless they had some really spectacular magical powers up their sleeves, they'd probably have an uphill battle on their hands if they ever tried to tackle Lorraine… or the creatures she'd just battled her way through.
"Kids built all this?" he asked. "How did they get the timber up this tree? How did they get the couch and the table this far? How did they build this place with all the monsters in the woods? How… how did they do anything?"
Lorraine laughed and patted his head reassuringly, clearly amused by his bewilderment. "Solomon Island wasn't always like this, Callum. I mean, there were a few monsters here and there, but nothing like what we've got now. The Draug and the zombies hadn't arrived yet, the Ak'Ab and the Wendigo were still dormant – mostly – and the other monsters weren't showing up in huge numbers. So, when they realized that the grown-ups weren't going to do anything about all the deaths, some of the local kids got together and started fighting monsters wherever they could find them."
"Including that pumpkin-guy?"
"Yes, including Jack O'Lantern."
"And they won?"
"Oh, many times. You'd be amazed at all the Wendigo fingers they collected up here."
"…but how did they even build this place?"
"I don't think they did it all in one go, Callum. Plus, I'm pretty sure they also had a few Innsmouth Academy students in the League, so that helped. Magic makes construction a lot easier, you know? It's probably how they got the couch and that safe up this tree as well."
"Safe?" Dipper echoed.
"It's up on the roof – supposedly all their secret files are hidden inside."
"Well, what happened to the League? Where are they all?"
Lorraine's face fell, as if suddenly remembering another painful truth. "The Fog got most of them," she said sadly. "There's only one left alive, and he hasn't been back here in months."
"Oh."
Dipper took a deep breath: by now, he was almost completely weirded out. But, unbelievably enough, he still had more questions… or more accurately, one that might explain a bit about Callum.
"Remind me," he said, "was I ever a member of the League?"
Once again, Lorraine's face took on that peculiar dead-eyed look of fear and despair.
"What happened when the Fog came, Mom? What caused it? Why is it still here after all these months?"
"I think it's past your bedtime now, Callum," she said quietly.
After that, the treehouse turned deathly silent as Lorraine prepared for bed: gathering up some tattered blankets from a chest in the corner of the room, she made a halfway-comfortable bed out of the moth-eaten sofa, bundled up Dipper as warmly as she could, and tucked him in for the night with all the care and precision that his real mom would have used when he was little. Indeed, Dipper got the distinct impression that she would have given him a teddy bear if she'd had one handy.
Once that was done, though, she could only kneel by the couch, seemingly unsure as to what to do next. "Do… do you want a bedtime story?" she asked, as if afraid that he might say no. "You used to love Hansel and Gretel when you were small."
Dipper briefly wondered exactly how old Lorraine thought he was, but then reflected that it probably didn't matter: Lorraine's grip on sanity was pretty loose at the best of times, and the fact that she thought that carrying him to a treehouse in the middle of a monster-infested forest was somehow the safest possible course of action didn't say much for her judgement.
But as he lay there, wondering if there was anything he could say that could possibly get through her delusions, he realized that this might be an opportunity to learn more about this weird place… though he'd have to be careful about what he asked. After all, every time he'd asked about something that was sensitive to Lorraine, she'd gotten spooked and clammed up. So, that ruled out Atlantic Island Park, Lorraine's past, Callum's personal history, why she could come back from the dead, or what she'd been doing at the Overlook, or if there was any chance of seeing the relatives he'd been kidnapped from.
In the end, he chose one of the few options he had left, almost on a whim.
"I was hoping I could hear about Jack O'Lantern," he said at last.
Lorraine's face immediately shifted through a complicated mixture of emotions, beginning with relief at being allowed to play mother again and ending with a look of classic parental reluctance. "Are you sure? It's not a very nice story, Callum."
"Yes, I'm sure: I want to know more about him. If that's okay with you, Mom," he added hastily, pasting on his best 'I've-been-a-good-little-boy' look.
For a while, Lorraine genuinely looked as if she might say no. But in the end, she proved no match for the Bambi eyes. Perhaps Dipper had learned a bit more from Grunkle Stan than he'd expected, or maybe 'Mom' was just desperate to make her 'son' happy. Either way, it worked.
So, while Dipper got comfortable, she sat down on the couch beside him, and began to relate the sad tale of the man who became Jack O'Lantern…
Jack's story began in Ireland, 1890.
Jack was a happy boy even with tragedy always fresh in the land, for he had music in his heart and silver on his tongue. Alas, he had mischief on his mind, too, couldn't sit still for all the gold in Ireland; so, he roamed from town to town in search of fun, playing the fiddle and playing the fool, charming into the way into the hearts of girls all over Ireland. He knew every heartwarming tune in the fiddler's repertoire, did Jack, and with a voice of an angel, it seemed that not even the worst of his mischief could ever get him in trouble. In the end, though, famine made his fair green homeland too bitter for his taste.
So, he hopscotched across the Atlantic, through Ellis Island, into the bright shiny world of New York City. It wasn't the paradise he'd imagined, though: the new world didn't need as many fiddle players as he thought it would, and Jack's sense of fun didn't win him any prizes. So, Jack made his way to the cold and foggy land of Maine, and from there, to Solomon Island. Alas, the people of the island were even more humourless than the ones in New York, and in 1907, Jack was forced to give up the free life of a fiddle player and become a farm labourer in the fields of Archibald Henderson.
Or, as they call him today, Old Man Henderson.
Archie Henderson was the most feared man on the island, known far and wide as an evil sorcerer. He'd been trained at Innsmouth Academy, one of the most powerful magi ever trained by the Eye and the Pyramid until he finally gave up the trade to become a farmer. But Henderson couldn't keep his hands clean. Stories are still told of the plagues he cast upon the innocent Wabanaki, of the suitors sent fleeing into the night for daring to try their luck with his daughters, of travellers butchered for their hearts, of the mad quests for magical knowledge he underwent in the dark places of the island...
But Jack didn't know about all that, didn't care about the reputation Old Man Henderson had garnered by then, and he certainly didn't know how protective he was of his one surviving daughter. If he did, he might have been more careful. But Jack was lonely, Samantha Henderson wanted an escape from her father's watching eyes, and sweet music once again came to the wandering fiddle player's aid. That same evening, Old Man Henderson found the two of them together in the pumpkin patch, and though Jack hadn't harmed her in the slightest, Henderson wasn't willing to forget – or forgive.
Erupting with rage, Old Man Henderson cursed Jack with all the terrible strength at his command, called down powers unseen by modern magic to transform his lowly farmhand beyond all recognition. Jack the Lad had defiled the farm, he said, sown seeds where none should have been planted, and must now be bound to reap what he should have grown.
And so, Jack the Lad became Jack O'Lantern, Lord of the Patch, bound to tend to the island's pumpkins for all time – and water their roots with the sweet blood of the children he would never father.
As for what became of Old Man Henderson, nobody knows for sure. Some say that Samantha took revenge for what he'd done to her lover; some say that he was killed when one of his own magical experiments turned on him; some even claim that he was working on a ritual that could harness the power beneath Solomon Island, tame the dark energies lurking underground and make them his own – though none can say what he planned to do with this power.
What is known is that Henderson's farm still stands – in pieces. Most of it was torn down in the 1970s, but a few barns remain from the old sorcerer's territory on Solomon Island's coast, not too far from Illumination Way.
By now, Lorraine was barely conscious. Around the time she'd reached the speculation, her eyelids had begun to droop, her wearisome frame subtly beginning to relax into the cushions of the sofa. So, Dipper budged over and allowed Lorraine to lie down next to him; after all, if she really did think she was his mother, it made sense that "Callum" would allow it.
In a matter of seconds, Lorraine was fast asleep. Dipper got the distinct impression that she'd been a lot more tired than she'd been letting on these last few hours, because nothing would rouse her, not even the distinct rattle of gunfire in the distance. For nearly half an hour, Dipper could only lie there, her arms caging him in; then, as she drifted steadily deeper into her slumber, her grip on him loosened until he was able to slip out of her grasp and onto the floor.
Of course, he wasn't stupid enough to make a break for freedom, not with monsters still patrolling the area and the forest being almost impossible to navigate in the dead of night. Under normal circumstances, he might have been willing to sit tight until morning before planning any kind of escape attempt, maybe even go back to bed. However, it occurred to him that he still had way too much to think about to even consider sleep.
For one thing, Lorraine's remarks on Illumination Way had gotten Dipper's attention: during the big sprint from the Black House, Dipper recalled seeing a few derelict-looking barns standing in the fields to their left as they sprinted down that road. Unless he'd gotten the layout of the island horribly wrong, they were practically right next-door to that abandoned amusement park… meaning that in all probability, most of Old Man Henderson's farm had been bulldozed to make way for Atlantic Island Park.
Old Man Henderson, Jack O'Lantern, Atlantic Island Park, the "dark energies lurking underground," the Draug digging teams, Lorraine's past… they were all connected. Maybe, if he could learn more about the park, he could unravel the whole web, get some answers – enough to snap Lorraine out of her delusions once and for all.
It'd be difficult getting serious information on that subject, given how Lorraine kept clamming up whenever he mentioned the park – but then, he wouldn't need to worry about asking questions. He knew that he had the perfect means of getting information out of her.
And as luck would have it, that method could be found on a piece of paper stashed in his left-hand pocket.
A/N: Any guesses as to what might be happen next? Feel free to theorize!
And now for the code:
Uork gsv Prmt lu Hdliwh – ivevihvw.
Hfxs z wzaaormt dsrgv ilyv, hfxs z hkovmwrw hzkksriv xildm.
Wl mlg gifhg srn, hdvvgormt. Srh znyrgrlm xlfow yrgv gsilfts hkzxv.
Sv lmxv kivkzivw z mllhv uli z gilfyovw blfmt dlnzm.
Hllm, sv nzb szev z nztrxrzm zg hdliwklrmg.