Pine Trees And Honeybees

by Straightjacketed

Just when it seems the summer excitement is over, a freak accident sends Dipper, Mabel, Stan and Ford hurtling into a parallel universe; worse still, it's being menaced by yet another demented monster - one that seems very interested in Dipper. Now it's time to see if the team can tackle the problems of another world... and live long enough to find a way home.

10. A Dreamer's Journey

A/N: And we're back! The madness continues - as does the rain! A huge thank-you to everyone who viewed, reviewed, favourited, and followed.

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: this is where the promised magic finally happens!

Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls and The Park are still not mine.

This chapter's soundtrack is Memoria by Nobuo Uematsu.

---

The Old Man chortled to himself.

Yes, this dark little fairy tale was progressing perfectly. His two protagonists were exactly where he needed them, and the two were being bound tighter and tighter together, both due to the impact of his will and the infinitely entertaining vagaries of Lorraine's warped brain. And if Dipper was about to do what the Old Man thought he was about to do, his curiosity was also about to play an important role in the chapters to follow.

Before long, they would be his.

Before long, infinity would follow in their wake.

In the meantime, the subtle stirrings from beneath the island had generated more power, and he now enough energy to exert a little more influence over reality beyond the park. Perhaps, to help the narrative along, he could alter things a little further in his favour – just a tiny bit, just enough to make things more suitable for the ritual. Just to smooth the transition.

Straightening his top hat, the Old Man raised his cane high into the night sky, and drawing upon powers older than galaxies, began his alterations in earnest…

---

The plan was about the simplest idea that Dipper had ever come up with.

In fact, if Mabel were here, she'd probably joke that he was finally managing not to overthink things… but alas, Mabel wasn't here and couldn't help him now. So, it fell to Dipper to set the idea in motion – and embark on what was also, unfortunately, the riskiest solo mission he'd ever thought of.

It was, in many ways, a more benign version of the scheme Gideon had worked out with Bill during their first encounter. Essentially, Dipper would use the incantation he'd copied from Bill's entry in the Journal to send himself into Lorraine's mind and go exploring in search of whatever information he needed to stop her.

Maybe there was some memory in there that would show him how to disable her powers; maybe he could find some way of convincing her that he wasn't Callum. After all, nobody really knew the full potential of the Mindscape; maybe it was possible to literally change Lorraine's mind by just finding the right door inside her head and shuffling the furniture around a little bit. Then again, Bill hadn't bothered with this sort of thing, so maybe it wasn't possible after all – but Dipper wouldn't know unless he gave it the old college try.

This was, of course, incredibly dangerous: Lorraine was crazier than a soup sandwich and probably had all manner of dark, disturbing things cluttering up her brain. After all, Dipper and Mabel had never had the chance to explore the minds of anyone as loopy as Old Man McGucket, for example. Grunkle Stan's mind had been weird and twisted enough on its own, and he'd been the nearest thing to a sane and rational adult in town; plus, he'd also been careful to keep his encounters with the supernatural in Gravity Falls to the bare minimum apart from his work on the portal. By contrast, Lorraine seemed to know the horrors of Solomon Island – Gravity Falls' mean-tempered cousin with a prison record – like the back of her hand, had probably seen every kind of monster on it up close and person, and judging by those panic attacks, she'd probably had a few very nasty experiences with them to boot. For all Dipper knew, trespassing on Lorraine's Mindscape might make her even worse.

And then there was the more worrying fact that Dipper didn't even know if the Mindscape incantation would work in this dimension. This was a completely different universe with its own weird systems of magic, after all: he might just end up reciting meaningless nonsense, and probably wake up Lorraine up, too. And what if she figured out what he was trying to do? Would she punish him? Would she try to chain him up so he wouldn't run away? Just how far would she go just to make sure Dipper didn't make a break for freedom?

But even with all the dangers arrayed against him, he had to try. He needed to find a way of escaping that didn't involve plunging into a forest infested with cicada-bear-things, and he needed to make sure that Lorraine didn't try to follow him. If all else failed, he needed to find some means of passing the time before he was rescued... if he was ever rescued.

So, he set to work, browbeating himself every step of the way by imagining all the snark Mabel would throw in his direction if she were here and caught him chickening out.

Thankfully, in spite of all the chaos that Dipper had endured in the last few hours – landing in volcanic ash, getting kidnapped by a crazy woman, being hauled through a forest, nearly ending up murdered by a pumpkin monster and splashing along a monster-infested beach – the paper was still intact. Doubly thankfully, there were a few matchboxes and plenty of candles left around the treehouse – enough to provide the magical circle that would help focus the spell – though Dipper could only guess at why anyone would want to keep so many candles in a building made almost entirely of wood.

Lorraine didn't stir once in the last few seconds Dipper took to psych himself up for the mission, not even when he placed his hand on her forehead and began to recite the words of the spell.

"Videntus omnium. Magister mentium. Magnesium ad hominem."

Dipper felt a familiar surge of power rippling through him and realized with a thrill of relief that the magic worked here after all. Feeling a little more confident, he continued.

"Magnum opus. Habeas corpus!"

Lorraine groaned sleepily, her eyelids fluttering ever-so-slightly as the magic began to take effect, and Dipper hastily lowered his voice to a deathly whisper, not wanting to wake her before the spell was complete.

"Inceptus Nolanus overratus. Magister mentium. Magister mentium. Magister mentium!"

He was dimly aware that his eyes were beginning to glow the same luminous shade of electric blue they had the last time he'd used this spell, just as Lorraine's own eyes were now glowing beneath her fluttering eyelids. Once again, that familiar vortex of power was forming above her head, opening a door into Lorraine's mind in much the same way as it had done for Grunkle Ford. On the periphery of Dipper's vision, the candles of the magical circle were swiftly winking out as the supernatural gale swept across them.

The light blossomed, brighter than ever; Dipper felt that all-too-recognizable sense of vertigo as the bottom dropped out of his skull and his mind left his body.

Then…

When the light finally faded, Dipper found himself sitting on a bewilderingly lopsided road in the middle of a deserted street that could have only appeared in a dream.

Once again, the surrounding environment was monochrome grey and flickering with static, exactly as it had been in Grunkle Stan's Mindscape. However, there were a few distinct differences: here, objects didn't float aimlessly towards the skies in a dance of failing gravity, but clung heavily to the ground; indeed, there seemed to be an awful lot of items that appeared to have collapsed under their own weight: garbage cans had toppled over, cars in the street had been overturned, statues had slumped forward on their plinths…

And there was a faint sound rippling across the Mindscape, almost imperceptible unless Dipper listened carefully; it took him a little while to work out what it was, but eventually he realized that it was the buzzing of bees – hundreds of them all droning placidly somewhere in the distance.

The architecture of this realm was a baffling sight at first, because he couldn't tell if this place was supposed to be a blend of locations that Lorraine had visited in the past, or if this was one place exactly as she remembered it. In this mad dimension, anything seemed possible. To Dipper's right, the street was a lonely country lane just like Solomon Road, lined on either side by huddled small-town homes and overshadowed by the murky depths of the nearby forest, lit only by the stuttering glow of a streetlight. On his left, though, the street took on a more urban character: the rough bitumen gave way to the fine granite paving stones of a colossal city square, lined with picturesque brass lampposts and beautifully sculpted marble buildings. Here and there, statue-studded fountains and heroic-looking monuments stood, only slightly despoiled by the overall air of ruination surrounding the place. Dipper thought he could just about discern the shape of a canal in the distance, as if this scene had been borrowed from Venice – and perhaps it had been.

But in much the same way as the hazy forest surrounding the Mindscape Mystery Shack had been little more than window dressing, all of this splendour and contrast was just a backdrop to the main body of Lorraine's Mindscape directly ahead of him.

The building was almost beyond description. From the front, it looked like any of the shadowy, anonymous suburban houses that Dipper had seen during his journey across Solomon Island so far… but behind the hunched roof, a colossal marble dome soared high above it; behind that, a bundle of vast roots the size of a freeway overpass erupted from the roof, a vivid golden light shining through the holes it had left in the house below; and behind that, a bewildering cluster of merged buildings jumbled the middle of the building, some of them resembling gaudy hotel facades, others little more than country cottages all ablaze. And at the centre of this chaos, a single stone cube the size of the Mystery Shack hovered in the gloomy twilit sky.

And at the furthest end of the house, the gargantuan shape of a Ferris Wheel stood on the horizon, towering over everything. Even at this distance, there was no mistaking the centrepiece of Atlantic Island Park, rendered a thousand times bigger and more ominous looking in Lorraine's dreams. For once, Dipper didn't wonder why one abandoned amusement park could have such a hold over her. Hopefully, this little mission would explain exactly why very soon.

At least I'm not racing against the clock this time, he thought, trying vainly to reassure himself.

Clambering upright, he made his way onto the tumbledown porch of the house, opened the door with an agonizing shriek of tortured hinges, and stepped inside. Immediately, he was greeted by a long, dingey corridor that looked like it hadn't been cleaned or repaired in decades: peeling plaster, frayed carpets, faltering lightbulbs, leaking ceilings, holes in the wall, broken windows, empty bottles piling up against the walls...

Could this have been Lorraine's house on Solomon Island? If so, no wonder they'd knocked it down. Come to think of it, it might go to some distance in explaining why Lorraine was so messed up.

Also, unless Dipper was deeply mistaken, the corridor appeared to be built on an incline leading subtly downwards, a ramp leading deeper into the bowels of Lorraine's mind. Trembling, Dipper began tiptoeing down the hallway – though he had no idea why he was trying to be so stealthy. After all, it wasn't as if anything was defending this place… hopefully.

So far, things didn't seem quite as Escher-esque as they'd been in Stan's mind…

…and no sooner had Dipper thought this, the hallway opened into what appeared to be the front room of the house – only rendered a thousand times bigger than any front room could be. It was roughly the size of the Northwest Manor's entrance hall, and currently twisting itself into a shape somewhere between a pyramid and an octagon. Also, there was a strange rustling sound in the distance, almost loud enough to blot out the now-omnipresent buzzing of bees.

And all around him, the familiar doors were opening wide to display Lorraine's memories.

Tentatively, Dipper peered inside one of the nearest ones, and was immediately greeted by a view of a front room much like the one he'd just left, except much smaller and much more realistically proportioned. Just down the corridor, though, two shadowy figures stood in the distance, screaming themselves hoarse; Dipper couldn't work out who they were or what they were saying, but he could tell that one was a man, and the other was a woman.

As Dipper watched, the man let out a particularly vicious-sounding string of gibberish and threw something at the wall with a crash of breaking glass, then without warning, shoved the woman across the room. The volume of the argument rose significantly – and then a sharp crack rang out, instantly silencing the house; Dipper couldn't see what was going on from his current angle, but sounded like someone had just been slapped.

Then, just as he was starting to wonder what he'd just witnessed, something small and shadowy crawled out from under a side-table and peered anxiously around the corner. It was a little girl, perhaps five years old, painfully skinny, unhealthy pale, and quite clearly terrified. However, it wasn't until Dipper saw the dark brown hair and tired blue eyes that he realized that he was looking at Lorraine's younger self.

Another angry shout rippled up the corridor towards her, and young Lorraine dived back into the shadows, eyes wide with fright, hands clasped tightly across her mouth.

Curious, Dipper moved on and peeked through another door perhaps ten feet ahead.

This time, the scene was the exterior of the house, allowing Dipper his first glimpse of Solomon Island in the daytime and without the Fog. It was so bright, so reassuring that he couldn't help but blink in astonishment at the sight of those rolling green hills and the reassuring springtime tones in the trees, wondering if he'd strayed into the memory of a different altogether. Indeed, the sight of it was so disarming that the sound of a door slamming nearly made him jump.

Back in the memory, a haggard-looking woman in her thirties was marching down the steps, holding Lorraine very tightly by the hand. Judging by the hair and the cast of her face, this could only be Lorraine's mother. Behind them, a furious-looking man stood on the porch, hollering obscenities at the top of his lungs, swaying clumsily as he tried and failed to follow the two of them down the path; he'd clearly seen better days, what with the sagging belly and the blotches marring his face, but judging by the familiar guttural rumble to the voice, this was presumably Lorraine's dad.

As Dipper watched, Lorraine was briskly escorted down the steps to a waiting car and ushered into the backseat, her mother pointedly ignoring the furious howls from Mr Maillard as she clambered into the driver's seat. Then, they were rumbling away, leaving Lorraine's father in the dust, impotently hurling beer bottles after them.

Not sure what this meant, Dipper moved on to the next door in line. This time, the scene was a different street in a different part of the country; frankly, what with those neatly mowed lawns and well-trimmed hedges, this could have been anywhere, but it obviously wasn't Solomon Island. It looked to be quite late in the afternoon, and there weren't any people left on the street except for young Lorraine and one other pedestrian several feet behind her. For some reason, Lorraine's perspective seemed to linger a bit on the man as he drifted along the street, but Dipper couldn't tell why: to the best of his knowledge, the man looked utterly nondescript – though admittedly the bright orange baseball cap did draw a lot of attention away from his face.

As for Lorraine, the transformation she'd undergone between scenes was nothing short of incredible. By the looks of her scraped knees, dirty clothes and the ball tucked under one arm, the little girl had been playing on the street and was probably heading home late. So far, she looked happy, even carefree; it was an emotion that never looked sincere on the adult Lorraine's face, but that was honestly how she looked in the moment.

Then…

Without warning, the pedestrian walking behind her suddenly lunged forward, grabbing Lorraine by the collar, and clamping a hand over her mouth so she couldn't scream. Moving at a lurching pace, the man began dragging her back down the street, towards the car that had been left idling on the corner… but it wasn't until they were inside and driving away that that Dipper finally realized that the kidnapper was none other than Lorraine's father.

And as Dipper stepped away from the door in growing confusion, he heard the rustling again, and a split-second later, a vast rippling cloud of papers rocketed down the corridor, covering the doorway in a storm of white so dense that it might as well have been a blizzard. It wasn't easy to tell, but most of them looked to be letters, dotted here and there with postcards, pages from diaries, official documents, brochures, and even post-it-notes.

I guess this is what passes for weather in this Mindscape, he mused.

Curious, he plucked a few of them from the storm as it roared past. Few of them stayed in his hands for very long before wrenching themselves free and fluttering off to rejoin the storm like startled pigeons, but Dipper did manage to get a good look at a few snippets before they flew away:

"…no proof that the girl was kidnapped…"

"…he remains her legal guardian, so the child will stay with him for the time being…"

"…and any torrid speculation remains unconfirmed. I hardly need remind you that Mrs Maillard ran away with her daughter rather than seeking legal separation…"

"…after extensive renegotiation, Mrs Maillard has agreed that her husband cannot be held legally responsible for her daughter's departure…"

"…I've made my peace with the fact that Lorraine probably just ran away to be with her dad."

As these scraps of paper flew away, Dipper couldn't help but feel just a tiny bit sick at heart. After everything that had happened to the girl, it wasn't much of a surprise that she'd grown up to become so miserable… but it still didn't explain why Lorraine had lost her mind as an adult, or why she'd kidnapped Dipper (and it certainly doesn't excuse it, he thought grumpily). Sighing, he moved several feet down the corridor, hoping that something from later in Lorraine's history could shed some more light on the story.

The next door in line took Dipper to a memory of Lorraine's house, this time the living room: Mr Maillard was slumped in an armchair in front of the TV, a half-empty bottle of tequila on the floor next to one dangling hand. Judging by what Dipper could see of the man in the flickering glow of the TV, the man looked to be several years older; the botches on his face were much bigger and now accompanied by several prominent-looking wrinkles.

Standing in the doorway, a teenaged Lorraine stood in awkward silence, too afraid to speak. The resemblance to her present self was stronger still, but Dipper had to stop himself from doing a double take at the sight of her, for at this age she looked a little like Wendy… except Lorraine's hair was brown instead of red, and where Wendy's slender arms were lined with wiry muscles, Lorraine was little more than skin and bones.

"Dad?" she whispered nervously. "It's… it's time for work. You said you wanted me to get you up at six. It's one minute past six."

Lorraine's father didn't respond.

"You said you'd be angry if I didn't wake you, remember? Come on, Dad. Up and at 'em."

Still no response. Sighing in despair, Lorraine stepped into the light, and Dipper finally noticed the spectacular bruise marring her left cheek. It looked worryingly recent as far as Dipper could tell, and she was obviously expecting to be given another one as she scurried over to her father's side and began the process of reluctantly shaking him awake.

"Come on, Dad, you know what'll happen if you show up late to work again. You told me you can't afford to get fired. Besides, it's a big day, remember? Mr Winter's coming to the island, and he'll need a guide."

If Lorraine's father knew or cared who Mr Winter was, he gave no sign.

"Look, I'll get some coffee for you, you can take a shower, and everything will be-"

Finally, Mr Maillard moved, and Lorraine darted back in alarm, but her dad made no move to hit her or even budge from his chair. If anything, the old man appeared to be relaxing even deeper into his easy chair if that were possible, slumping lower and lower down the seat cushions as the seconds ticked by.

"Dad?"

Lorraine reached out and tapped the side of her dad's head, gave him another shake, only to be greeted by more silence.

In desperation, she reached out and slapped him across the chops.

Still nothing.

Very slowly, Lorraine withdrew, looking at once horrified and relieved. Were those tears in her eyes, or was that just a trick of the light?

Dipper sighed and shut the door, trying not to feel guilty for spying, trying to convince himself that this was necessary and failing every step of the way.

---

After that, Dipper merely skimmed the doorways, moving from one memory to the next in the desperate hope of uncovering something worthwhile.

Once Lorraine turned eighteen, her life seemed to consist of nothing but work: having barely scraped through high school, she'd picked up a job as a waitress at one of the diners Dipper had seen on the beach and did her best to look for more promising work elsewhere. Unfortunately, nobody had been willing to take her on apart from the Susie's Diner, and she hadn't been able to afford higher education, so there she'd stayed. She spent most of her evenings reading cheap paperbacks by candlelight, trying to put together halfway decent meals with what little her salary could provide, and doing her best to resist the temptation to go for her dad's liquor cabinet.

Even her clothes weren't all that spectacular: from day to day, she dressed in blue jeans and brown turtleneck sweaters, and rarely wore anything more colourful than that; her two concessions to style were a blue headband and a silver necklace with a pendant in the shape of an axe – one of the few things that Lorraine's mother had left behind in the old house, and one of the few things that Lorraine wasn't forced to pawn so she could pay her bills.

Eventually, though, Solomon Island seemed to change.

When Lorraine was in her twenties, the island saw a huge influx of construction workers from out of town, and it didn't take much effort for Dipper to figure out why: according to the calendar, it was now 1978, and according to the gossip around the diner, Atlantic Island Park was under construction, courtesy of some eccentric millionaire throwing a lot of money at the site of Old Man Henderson's farm.

Dipper shook his head in frustration. So far, he'd proved his theory that Lorraine was older than she looked in the present, but there still wasn't much explanation for it. Doubly annoyingly, Lorraine didn't seem to have much to do with the amusement park so far, though several members of the construction crew paid visits to the diner over the next few months. They were a pretty rowdy bunch, and quite a few of them tried to chat Lorraine up while she was on her nightly shift; every now and again, one of them made a grab at Lorraine's backside. She barely reacted, even when the manager threw the culprit out; indeed, Lorraine seemed to sport a near-permanent look of fish-eyed apathy while at work.

And then Dipper stumbled across a memory that caught his interest almost immediately: two figures stood under a streetlight just outside Susie's Diner. One was clearly Lorraine; the other was a handsome young man that Dipper didn't recognize. From the looks of things, they were deep in conversation.

"What's your name?"

"Donald Williams. My friends call me Don. And you?"

"Lorraine Maillard. You still haven't explained why you stayed until the end of my shift."

"I was hoping I could walk you home. Don't worry, I'm not trying anything, I just wanna talk. I haven't had a decent conversation since I got here."

"…I really don't have much worth talking about. I, um… really haven't had much to do apart from work in the last couple of years."

"Hey, I'm in the same boat as you, believe me: ever since I got here, if I haven't been working, I've been busy trying to recover – not easy. I tell you, the diner's been about the only thing keeping me away from the bars. Some of the other guys haven't been so lucky, though: they can barely climb out of the bottle long enough to clock on the next day."

"Is it really that bad?"

"It's hell up there. Seems like someone gets killed in an accident every other day of the week, and if it's not accidents, then it's all this weird new equipment Winter's got us installing underground, and if it's not that, then it's ghosts."

"Ghosts?"

"By the sounds of things, sure. The rides whisper, especially at night, though I've never been brave enough to go check for myself." Don shrugged. "Atlantic Island Park, huh? God only knows if anyone's ever gonna visit that thing once it's opened… if it's ever opened. I mean, I hope it is, otherwise there's going to be one hell of an eyesore on the coast that nobody knows what to do with. I mean, with all the accidents we've had just trying to put the place together, can you imagine what it's going to be like trying to demolish that place? Jesus Christ…"

Against all expectations, Lorraine laughed. Bit by bit, that dull-eyed look of wearied acceptance was finally leaving her eyes. "Come on," she chuckled. "Let's not stick around; it's getting late, and you'll probably miss the bus back to the mainland if you spend all night walking me home."

"I'm not staying on the mainland," admitted Don, as they set off. "I've got a room up at the Overlook."

"How's that treating you?"

"Not good: with the peanuts that cheapskate bastard's paying us right now, I'm not exactly getting the five-star treatment. Plus, every time there's an accident, Winter starts docking pay for 'falling standards of employee excellence,' so..."

"Well, why don't you stay at my place? I mean, it's not like I'm doing anything with all the empty rooms I've got…"

Dipper hummed thoughtfully to himself. Atlantic Island Park certainly sounded nasty enough to have had an effect on Lorraine, but he still hadn't seen her actually visiting it in her memories so far – indeed, no association except through Don. Come to think of it, what had happened to Don? Why hadn't Lorraine mentioned him at any point back in the present? If this little meeting meant what Dipper suspected it meant, then it should have been first and foremost among Lorraine's nostalgic musings.

Judging by the strange gasping noises coming from the next door in line, it probably did.

Dipper hastily moved on without looking. He was already intruding on Lorraine's most sensitive memories and feeling all the guiltier for doing so; the last thing he wanted was to make this any creepier than it already was.

The next few memories all seemed to show Lorraine in Don's company: hugging, kissing, buying ice cream cones, taking long walks along Fletcher Bay, going to a local restaurant together, whale-watching just off the coast of the island and laughing at how much the tickets had cost them… it was like something out of those horrendously sappy romance movies that Grunkle Stan only ended up watching when there was literally nothing else on late-night TV. Don even bought her some new additions to her wardrobe, most prominently a brown leather jacket, which Lorraine insisted on wearing almost everywhere from then on.

However, though the house seemed a little bit brighter with Don around, it clearly wasn't always happy: more than once, Dipper opened the next door in line to find Lorraine and Don in the middle of a colossal shouting match, and though they never got anywhere near as violent as Lorraine's parents had gotten, a lot of these ended with Lorraine in tears. Most of the arguments seemed to concern Don returning late from the construction site, but Don's only explanation on every single occasion seemed to be some variant on "trouble at work."

And judging by the newspapers on the table, the trouble never stopped.

Every day at the half-finished amusement park there was another accident, another worker killed or maimed while setting up the rides. None of the journalists investigating the carnage had been able to discover any reasons for the chaos, and no explanations were ever given by the park officials, but somehow the construction never stopped. Despite being one of the most dangerous workplaces on all of Solomon Island, Atlantic Island Park remained alive and under construction.

In any case, whatever happened at the construction site, Don always walked away feeling a little more miserable, and not just because of the accidents. There was something at the park itself, he would feverishly mutter, something about the rides that whispered after dark, something that left every worker writhing in anxiety the longer they remained there. And the longer they worked, the worse it got, and the angrier they became.

"I don't want to see you until I can forget what's happening at that park," he kept saying. "I don't want you to see me until I'm in my right mind again."

"You always say that! What does that even mean, Don?"

"I… I can't explain it. All I know is that… I'm not a good person there."

Don did seem to be getting moodier as time went on, but then, he wasn't the only one who was changing. Dipper wasn't exactly an expert on this sort of thing, but even he couldn't fail to notice that Lorraine's stomach was looking just a little bit bigger every day; she was pregnant. And yet, no sign of a ring on her finger, or on Don's; Lorraine was still using her maiden name, and the mail was all addressed to "Maillard," not "Williams."

Before Dipper could wonder about the state of their relationship, though, Lorraine was already discussing baby names with Don. Once again, though, the man's heart just didn't seem to be in it; he couldn't bring himself to discuss the subject except in a furtive, apologetic letter that offhandedly remarked "Callum for a boy and Emma if it is a girl."

Behind the next few doors, Don would wallow on the couch in a seemingly unshakeable state of depression, unable to rise until at least three hours after he had returned from the bar. Any attempt to interrupt his reverie would result in another shouting match. Only once the three hours were up could Don finally rise from his pit of misery and slide into bed, hugging Lorraine and whispering apologies in her ear. Once again, Dipper wasn't an expert, but he got the distinct impression that both of them were ailing in their own quiet, terrible way.

And then-

Lorraine was huddled alone in a corner of the living room, sobbing helplessly. Lying on the carpet in front of her was a letter, torn to shreds, and though Dipper couldn't read most of it in its current state, a few sentences stood out:

"…on behalf of Winter Industries, allow me to offer my sincerest condolences…"

"…no observers to the incident…"

"…working on the Ferris Wheel when his harness failed…"

"…sorry for your loss…"

In the background, Lorraine went on crying, beyond all consolation.

---

What happens next? Dipper wondered to himself. The commander of those guys in white uniforms said that Callum wasn't real. Does that mean that something happened before he was born? Does something happen to the baby?

But even with these questions, it was a while before Dipper could bring himself to look through the next few doors.

That rotten, guilt-ridden feeling was back again and worse than ever; he knew that he'd set out to explore Lorraine's mind with the best of reasons, but now he was honestly starting to feel like an invader, a burglar rifling through Lorraine's most precious memories in search of valuables. All he'd done since he'd arrived was spy on moments that she'd have preferred to keep to herself, and the longer it went on, the worse he felt.

More to the point, he was getting the distinct impression that he wasn't going to learn anything worthwhile from this little field trip inside his kidnapper's brain: after all the tragedy she'd experienced, it wouldn't surprise him if Lorraine had simply lost hope and started playing pretend. He knew that the only decent thing he could do now would be to quit and give Lorraine some privacy inside her own head. He'd seen enough already, and most of that been none of his business; Dipper had seen stuff like this on the news (usually when his parents were out of the room), and though it usually didn't happen to a single person over the course of their lives, Lorraine's hard, miserable life was pretty mundane so far. There was nothing that even suggested that there was something magical behind what had happened, certainly nothing that he could change from here. So, why not just give up now, leave his captor's brain alone and wait to be rescued?

But Dipper's curiosity was already hitting override buttons. He still hadn't learned how Lorraine had become immortal, or what the deal with Atlantic Island Park really was; and perhaps there was some hidden weakness that he hadn't learned about yet. Yes, he was intruding, yes, he was only going to feel worse the deeper he got, but he had to try to learn more… otherwise he might never see Mabel and his Grunkles ever again.

So, on he went, skimming doors as quickly as possible.

---

Lorraine practically sleepwalked through the remaining months of her pregnancy, before finally giving birth in a memory that Dipper politely excused himself from. The baby was named Callum, and judging by the comments overheard, he appeared to be healthy, disproving Dipper's theory that the baby had died young. Indeed, the doctors seemed satisfied that that the baby was in excellent health despite the mother's condition.

However, Dipper couldn't help noticing the way Lorraine looked at the child when she finally held him: she did all the right things, even singing the occasional lullaby ("Five Little Ducks" seemed to be a favourite), and every now and again, she seemed to look upon the tiny bawling shape in her arms with all the love and affection you'd hope to see. But more often than not, she looked at baby Callum – her Little Duck – with confusion, sorrow, and maybe even a little resentment.

Once, alone in her room, she happened to glance down at the baby, and without thinking, remark "is this it?"

Instantly, she clapped a hand to a mouth, horrified by what she'd just said – but said it she had.

She didn't go home from there.

Instead, the next memory featured Lorraine, shivering and crying, being strapped to a bed in a white-tiled room as disinterested-looking orderlies shook their heads at her.

"Postpartum depression," they grumbled, almost-but-not-quite out of earshot. "Guess the docs just can't call her a crazy bitch anymore, huh? You ask me, that's just her excuse for being a terrible mom."

As Dipper watched in horror, doctors began setting up a strange-looking machine by Lorraine's bedside, extending two electrodes from it and attaching them to her temples. They asked her several questions, waited with exaggerated patience for her to stammer out her replies, gave her a form to sign, assured her that everything would be okay, and then gave her an injection; within a few minutes, Lorraine was unconscious. As soon as she was out cold, nurses fitted her with a mouth guard, gave her another injection, and then stood aside as the doctors and technicians zeroed in on the machine.

There was an ominous pause, as one of the young doctors at work on the machine eyed Lorraine with growing concern. "Did her eye just move?"

"So what if it did?" said the other.

"What if the anaesthetic didn't work? What if she's still conscious?"

"Again, I have to ask: so what?"

"Well, don't you think we should reschedule? I mean, if it gets out that she could see and feel what happens next-"

"Anderson, nobody gives a shit. Besides, even if she does feel anything, it's not as if she's going to remember what happens next, anyway. The sooner we finish dealing with this emotional cripple, the sooner we can get back to helping real patients with real problems. Clear?"

"…yes, Dr Pemberton."

"Good. Beginning first controlled shock in three… two… one…"

There was a muffled hum from the machine, and then the entire room went white. Instantly, the door that Dipper had been peering through slammed shut; this seemed to be the end of the memory, so Pemberton had presumably been right.

It took a while to find a memory outside of the hospital, but eventually, Dipper found a door leading to a scene of Lorraine staggering back to her old house with a baby carrier in one hand, the dark and cobwebbed old building now adorned with a cradle, a crib, and a mobile – none of which did anything to cheer up the now-desolate home. And if Lorraine had looked downcast before, now she looked downright crushed.

From the looks of things, she was taking pills now, bottles of prescription drugs that rattled in her pockets like so many handfuls of dice, and whenever the time came for her next dose, she would cling to the bottles like a drowning sailor might clutch a life preserver.

But she and Callum weren't alone in the house – not by a long shot. When Lorraine awoke from her first haunted sleep next to the cradle, she saw a faded, spectral figure standing over her baby, a familiar smile drifting in and out of focus.

"It's okay, Lorraine," Don whispered, his voice as ghostly as the rest of him. "Everything's going to be okay. Every day will be a little better than the last."

Then he was gone. Lorraine smothered her tears, dried her eyes, and downed another handful of pills, clearly trying to forget what she'd just seen. It didn't work – because her father's ghost was next, shaking his head in disgust at the sight of her. But from the looks of things, ghostly intrusions were the least of Lorraine's problems.

Another storm of letters rippled across the Mindscape, each of them bringing worse news with every snippet that Dipper was able to read:

"I loved you, I truly did, but every year, you grew more and more like him. You were his girl, never really mine…"

"…after multiple attempts to collect payment, we regret to inform you that your service has been disconnected…"

"…they consider you ineligible to receive any of the monies from Donald's estate…"

"…I can't let you back into my life without picking open old wounds…"

"…if you feel at any time that you are suffering a relapse…"

"…I hope that I am not being too forward when I enclose the bill for our services with this letter…"

"I am not ready to forgive you. Please don't contact me again."

In spite of everything that Lorraine had done in the last few hours since he'd met her, Dipper couldn't help but feel that familiar stab of pity once more. He could hear her crying more often with every door he passed, now, and the house was always dark and cold – courtesy of the latest disconnection… and on the rare occasions where he could see Lorraine in natural light, she rarely looked very healthy. She wasn't eating as often as she should, with most of the money being spent on her son, the power bills… or on discreet visits to the liquor store.

And the ghosts didn't help much, either.

But still, Lorraine tried.

Door by door, Callum grew up. Before long, the cradle vanished; a toddler was now bounding around the house, and an exhausted Lorraine was doing her best to keep up with him. All too often, she simply didn't have the time to care for him; most of her day was spent at the diner, struggling to bring home enough money to keep the lights on, leaving Callum in the care of a rather gloomy-looking woman by the name of Norma Creed. Norma already had a family of her own, by the looks of things, so she never seemed to have any problems.

Every now and again, Norma would be too busy to babysit, forcing Lorraine to make do with a strange, faintly hippyish woman with a mass of long, curly hair and a sad, slightly apologetic smile. It took a while for Dipper to find a memory where she was named, but it eventually turned out that this was none other than Carrie Killian – the owner of the burned house where Dipper and Lorraine had first taken cover. Dipper couldn't quite connect Carrie with the haunted nightmare that her home became thirty years onwards, but Little Callum was always happy to see her, at any rate, and Lorraine was grateful that Carrie's babysitting fees were so cheap.

And every now and again, Lorraine would venture out to the now-open Atlantic Island Park with Callum in the stroller, buying tickets with what little money she could afford to spare. And she would try to be happy: she would paste on a desperate smile, and say things like "your daddy used to work here, Callum" or "you were born the day the park opened, did you know that, Little Duck?" but no matter how hard she tried, she always ended up walking away a little more miserable than before.

By now, she could barely bring herself to look at the newspapers, for all of them seemed to be reporting on the latest catastrophe at the park. But somehow, even with the worst safety record on the western seaboard, Atlantic Island Park remained open, even now that the press was starting to take aim at the eccentric millionaire who'd had the park built in the first place – the infamous Mr Winter that Don had grumbled about.

Whatever the case, Lorraine always threw the newspaper in the trash before she could finish reading the first line, before letting Norma or Carrie into her house and scurrying out the door for work.

But when Lorraine was home…

More than once, Dipper opened a door to find her collapsed in an armchair, too exhausted to pay the slightest bit of attention to the toddler tugging at her sleeve. Wearily, Lorraine would scoop the child into her arms with a mumble of "hey, Little Duck," and then drift into unconscious with her son plaintively patting her arm for attention.

All too often, there'd be a half-empty glass of wine by her side as well.

Behind another door, Dipper found Lorraine returning to her parked car to find the town's sheriff standing by it, a look of disapproval etched on his otherwise-solemn face: Callum was sitting in the passenger seat, fast asleep and completely unattended. Lorraine said nothing as the sheriff wrote her a parking ticket; she just stood there, eyes to the ground, quietly wilting in shame… right up until the sheriff gently suggested that she get help.

For a split second, Lorraine's eyes widened in horror, and the mindscape around her was suddenly crowded with a floating metropolis of text all rendered in jagged capital letters – Lorraine's internal monologue made manifest – all saying the same thing:

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

And occasionally:

NO THEY DON'T CARE THEY DON'T WANT TO HELP THEY'LL NEVER LET ME OUT AGAIN I'LL NEVER SEE CALLUM AGAIN HE'S ALL I HAVE LEFT

But outwardly, Lorraine said nothing. She meekly accepted the ticket, mumbled her acquiescence, and went home, waiting until the car was parked in the safety of her driveway before crying into the steering wheel.

Another door, another memory: Norma looking at Lorraine with growing concern, taking in her haggard, sharp-boned face, her spindly frame and slightly oversized clothes, her tired eyes and near-translucent skin.

"Are you sure you're okay, hon?" she asked. "You can stay over for dinner if you need to rest for a while."

But once again, Lorraine's internal monologue screamed that this would only end in tears – that if she let any weakness show, people would realize that she couldn't care for Callum, could barely care for herself, and that would be the end of it. Once they realized that she was seeing ghosts, she'd be alone, probably locked away for good. And ringing in Lorraine's ears were the words the doctor at the psychiatric ward had murmured all those years ago: "Nobody gives a shit."

Out loud, Lorraine thanked Norma but politely declined.

Another door: Carrie Killian was sitting in the tumbledown living room, murmuring arcane words as she traced her finger across a long, jagged cut on Callum's hand – and before Lorraine's stunned eyes, the cut vanished as if by sleight of hand.

Lorraine blinked in astonishment, clearly trying to convince herself she hadn't seen anything, her inner monologue screaming that she was crazy and that she couldn't trust her own eyes.

"You're not going to tell me how he got this?" Carrie asked softly; there was no judgement in her voice, but her tone was strictly no-nonsense.

Lorraine couldn't meet her eyes.

"It was the anniversary yesterday, wasn't it?"

Lorraine nodded, shamefaced.

"You need to stop going to the park, Lorraine. It's not helping anyone; it's only hurting you – and Callum. Don's not there anymore… and I know for a fact that he wouldn't want you to be like this."

This time, Lorraine couldn't even look in her direction. Instead, she turned around, afraid to let Carrie see her tears.

"You know it's not safe there anymore, not after what happened to Steve Gardener. I don't know how, but that place always brings out the worst in people. Even Callum knows it isn't right for him. How do you think he ended up with this cut to begin with?"

"And how does he know?" Lorraine demanded icily.

"Very young children have a habit of sensing what adults can't put into words. And perhaps insight runs in your family; have you ever seen or felt anything supernatural?"

Lorraine hesitated, clearly thinking of the ghosts she still occasionally saw around the house. In the end, she shook her head, inner monologue blaring warnings of what might happen if anyone found out.

Ducking out, Dipper tried to find a memory of how Callum had gotten the cut on his hand, but all he found behind the doors leading up to the healing were a bleary, confused jumble of images, followed by a few too many glasses of wine. Still, that didn't stop Dipper from guessing. Judging by the bruises on Callum's tiny hand, it seemed reasonable to assume that Lorraine, drunk, tired, and probably not paying attention to what she was doing, had been dragging him along and accidentally raked his arm with her fingernails when he'd lagged behind or tried to stop.

The next few dozen doors were extremely pedestrian: Lorraine seemed to have spent most of the next few years in a haze of work and alcoholism, occasionally being bolstered by Norma, Carrie, or her boss. Bit by bit, though, she seemed to withdraw as the months dragged on; she didn't have too many friends in town and even fewer reachable by phone or mail, and longer time dragged out, the more of them she lost contact with. Before long, her babysitters were all that remained… and they couldn't always be there: Norma was too busy to be a babysitter every day of the week, and Carrie seemed to be fearing for her life in the later memories.

The last time Lorraine ever saw Carrie, she was murmuring anxiously that someone had been spreading rumours about her, that people were starting to call her a devil worshipper, that one of the local teenagers had thrown a Molotov cocktail into her garden that morning… until at last, she confessed that it might not be safe for Lorraine to leave Callum alone with her. "I know it's not fair," she said sadly, "but I don't want you or your little boy hurt because of me. Maybe, if I can get things straightened out with Innsmouth Academy, I might be able to go back to babysitting… but I get the feeling they aren't going to make it easy on me."

She'd said her farewells, apologised one again, and hugged Lorraine goodbye, kissing her on the cheek as she drew away for the las ttime. And as Carrie had crept anxiously back down the front path, hiding her face and scurrying for the safety of her car, Lorraine seemed to wilt just a little further.

DON'T GO, her inner monologue begged. PLEASE. I CAN'T STAND THE SILENCE.

But go she did, and Lorraine was left struggling to care for Callum. Most of the details were extremely hazy from this point onward, given the amount of wine and pills Lorraine seemed to need just to get through the day, but it was becoming obvious that Lorraine wasn't up to being a full-time parent. Oh, she tried, desperately tried to be a good mother: when she was sober and conscious, she did all the right things; she played Callum's games, she read Hansel and Gretel to him by candlelight when the power was turned off, she held and comforted him whenever she could, she even did her best to teach him how to read and write – local preschools apparently being outside Lorraine' meagre funds. And, of course, the lion's share of her salary went to providing his meals, the rest being spent on wine and her prescription, which wasn't getting any cheaper.

But at other times, Callum was simply left to his own devices, Lorraine being too tired, too drunk, or too depressed to pay attention.

Even Dipper could see that she was slipping a little further with every memory he witnessed. No matter how insistently Don's ghost would tell her that every day would be better than the last, Lorraine never seemed to get better… nor did she believe that anything could get better.

Then came the day when the prescription was cancelled, and things got even worse.

"Callum, where did you get this bruise?"

"…Nowhere."

"Has someone hurt you?"

"…No."

"Callum, it's okay, you don't have to be afraid-"

"Don't touch me!"

"Little Duck-"

"Get back!"

"OW! Callum!"

Eventually, Callum turned five, and Dipper couldn't help but notice something strange – something that had been bothering him ever since the kid had been old enough to walk.

He wasn't seeing the resemblance.

Yes, Lorraine's son had the same hair colour as him, albeit maybe a shade darker; yes, Callum looked a bit like Dipper had as a five-year-old; and yes, they both had the same scrawny, short-for-their-age build. But other than that, the similarities weren't as incredible as Dipper had been expecting. Callum had a much narrower face than him, a slightly different cast to the jawline, paler skin and darker eyes. And of course, he didn't have a birthmark. All in all, Callum would only have passed as Dipper's doppelganger at a distance.

So, what could have possibly made Lorraine confuse Dipper and Callum? Was she simply crazy, or was something else going on?

---

It was then that, just as Dipper was progressing forward down the corridor with half a mind to learn more, a new and unsettling sound joined the cacophony of distant noises rippling across the mindscape. It took a while for him to recognize what it was, but once he did, Dipper couldn't stop himself from shuddering in fear.

Somewhere close by, footsteps were echoing through the corridors of Lorraine's mind… and getting steadily closer.

Dipper tried to remain calm: he didn't break into a run, but he did increase his pace ever-so-slightly, moving along the hallway at a brisk march that left no time to explore any of the doors. With any luck, he wouldn't have to leave Lorraine's mind before he'd learned everything he needed to know, so if he could just stay ahead of whatever was following him and find a place to hide, he could continue the investigation later.

Unfortunately, whatever was following him seemed to match his pace almost perfectly, and no matter how far Dipper went, the footsteps only seemed to get closer and closer. As the second ticked by and anxiety skyrocketed, Dipper wondered if this was just some strange echo haunting Lorraine's mindscape and he was frightening himself with the sound of his own footsteps… but eventually, the noise was close enough for him to recognize that the walk didn't match his own. Whoever was chasing him walked with a loping, staggering wobble, the footsteps irregular and shuffling, accompanied by an ominous tapping.

Dipper was trying to guess what kind of creature could have had a walk like that when, as if on cue, a shadow suddenly crept over him. Dipper didn't turn around – that would have been an invitation for whatever was standing there to pounce – but broke into a jog, hoping that whatever was following him might eventually give up.

No such luck: once again, it matched his pace, hobbling after him with a speed that belied its clumsy gait. Before long, the shadow was close enough for him to get at least a hint of what was pursuing him, and though the body was too indistinct to distinguish anything from the inhumanly skinny arms, Dipper felt his blood freeze as he recognized the all-too-distinctive shapes of a top hat and cane.

It's not Bill, he told himself. Just because it's got the same hat and the same cane doesn't mean it's the same person. It's a monster, yes, but that doesn't mean its…

Unable to finish the thought, he risked a quick glance over his shoulder – and let out a yelp of terror as he realized that the monster was less than five feet away from him. But even now that he could see it clearly, the figure standing behind him was just an amorphous mass of ragged black cloth, a swirling monstrosity with no distinguishing features apart from the top hat on its head and the cane in its hands. For all Dipper knew, it could very well be Bill. Maybe Bill had his own counterpart in this dimension, and maybe it lived inside Lorraine's head – and that was why she was so crazy.

As if this wasn't bad enough, the monster now began to sing, crooning a low, mocking lullaby in a voice that sounded as if it had bubbled up from hell. "One little duck went out one day," it purred, "over the hills and far away. Mama Duck said 'quack, quack, quack, quack,' but no little ducks came back…"

And then, just as it looked as if the monster was just about to pounce, Dipper he found himself abruptly tearing through a barrier of police tape and finding himself in a part of Lorraine's Mindscape unlike anything he'd seen before. Abruptly, the shadow vanished, and the sound faded out of existence; a quick glance over his shoulder confirmed that the ominous silhouette in the distance was gone.

So that's what I've got to worry about here, he mused silently. I guess that was one of Lorraine's nightmares; makes sense – I mean, Lorraine's crazy, so no wonder her bad dreams are allowed to wander around her brain at will.

Once Dipper was certain that his pursuer was gone, he felt safe enough to look around – hoping against hope that the nightmare wouldn't appear again as he began inspecting the area.

Here, the hallways didn't look like they'd been borrowed from Lorraine's house; if anything, they resembled sewers and tunnels more than anything, grim catacombs illuminated only by the dull red glow of emergency lighting. Lengths of police tape wreathed every entrance, accompanied by dozens of warning signs and stencilled demands of "KEEP OUT" on the walls. And as for the doors around here, they were tall imposing affairs of steel and deadbolts; most of them were covered with heavy security grilles and padlocked for good measure, and a few looked to have been welded shut. The buzzing was louder here, too, forming a solid wall of noise that only became more aggravating as the journey down the passageway continued. And on almost every inch of wall not covered by warning signs and doors, a sentence had been daubed in green spray-paint:

"IN MY HEART AND MIND, I ALWAYS RETURN TO ATLANTIC ISLAND PARK."

This was new to Dipper, for in his one visit to Grunkle Stan's mind, he'd never seen security measures like this: as far as he knew, the doors inside Stan's Mindscape were all unlocked and easily accessed, so for Bill the problem had been the matter of finding the right one. So what did this mean as far as Lorraine's mind was concerned? Did this mean that Lorraine had been expecting to have her brain invaded at some point and somehow found a way of protecting her memories… or did it mean that she was keeping these moments of her life locked away from herself?

There was only one way to find out. Picking out one of the few doors that hadn't been barred or welded shut, Dipper swung it open with great difficulty and stepped inside the next memory.

However, he found himself looking at not one memory, but two: the next recollection in line was divided neatly in half, almost like a splitscreen presentation – and both halves showed a different scene complete with wildly differing events… but both featured the same place: Atlantic Island Park, as seen from the parking lot.

In one version of the scene, to Dipper's right, it was almost dusk: Atlantic Island Park and its borders were all bathed in the golden light of sunset, every inch of the compound lit up. Windshields glittered in the setting sun, shadows mulled resentfully under the cars and behind the statues, and the happy sun logo above the entrance seemed to glow under the fading sunlight. In the distance, just past the ticket booth and the colossal escalator that lay beyond, the distant shapes of rides and attractions stood out on the horizon like monuments. And while the loudspeakers announced that it was almost closing time, Lorraine stood by her car, grimly listening while Callum explained that Mr Bear was nowhere to be found.

In this memory, Lorraine crept over to the ticket booth to ask for help. Behind the window, a slender ticket-taker with neatly combed blond hair and an immaculate moustache looked back at her, his reassuringly average face a mask of concern. "Don't blame yourself, Lorraine," he said softly. "People lose things all the time. Take a deep breath and think about the last place you saw your son's teddy bear."

Behind her, Callum sprinted past them, somehow crawling under the turnstile and into the park. The ticket-taker hastily pressed a few buttons, allowing Lorraine to follow Callum through the gate and up the escalator, into the depths of the park.

But in the other version of the same memory, it was night. The Park now stood in near-total darkness; the parking lot was now empty except for a cloying mass of shadows that not even the few meagre streetlights could penetrate. Now, under the sickly-pale light of the moon, the distant shapes of the Ferris Wheel and the rollercoaster seemed more like the bones of some prehistoric monster littering the horizon. Stranger still, there was no escalator, only a set of locked gates… and this made sense to Dipper, because as far as he'd been able to see back in the real world, Atlantic Island Park had been built on a flat plain, not a cliffside. And here, Lorraine stood alone in the parking lot, with sign of her car in sight. Again, this made perfect sense to Dipper: from what he'd seen so far, Lorraine hadn't had the money to buy gas for nearly a month.

And where Lorraine had been gloomy but otherwise unconcerned in the previous version of this scene, now she looked about five steps removed from a nervous breakdown.

"Callum!" she screamed, voice on the edge of hysteria. "Callum, where are you?!"

Somewhere in the distance, a tiny figure could be seen slipping through a hole in the fence, all but vanishing into the shadows beyond the paltry lights of the parking lot. And yet, though it was obvious that this was obviously Callum, Dipper couldn't tell if he'd jumped through the gap… or if he'd been dragged.

"Callum! Callum, come back!"

Frantic, Lorraine charged after the retreating figure, hurrying as fast as her spindly legs could carry her, but by the time she had reached the fence, Callum was long gone. In desperation, she veered off towards the park's main gate, now chained up and reinforced with a heavy security grille – and in the process, she almost crashed headlong into a figure standing just to the left of the entrance.

At first, Dipper didn't recognize the man: for the first couple of seconds, he was still in shadow, but as he darted out of Lorraine's way, he happened to step into the moonlight just long enough for his face to creep into view. It was the ticket-taker: same blond hair, same moustache, same piercing blue eyes, same clerkish face, same orange tie. In fact, the only thing different about him was the camera draped around his neck.

"Call the police!" Lorraine gasped, skidding to a halt.

The ticket-taker eyed her curiously.

"My son just ran in through there! We need someone to get the doors open so I can look for him; now hurry up, there's a phone booth just down the street! This is a matter of life or death!"

This time, there was no concern in the ticket-taker's eyes. If anything, the look on his face could only be described as one of fascination. "Of course, ma'am," he said, his voice unnaturally calm. "I'll call right now."

He made as if to leave, but at the very last moment, he spun around, raised his camera, and took a snapshot of Lorraine. Then, before she could recover from the flash or demand an explanation, the ticket-taker took off running… and from where Dipper was standing, he could tell that the man wasn't headed in the direction of the phone booth at all.

Baffled, Lorraine looked around in desperation, trying to find some way of unlocking the gates or slipping under them. Finding none, she tried the hole in the chain-link fence that Callum had vanished through, only to find that it was only big enough to accommodate a child. In the end, her only option was the fence itself, and so, with her bare hands and worn boots, she began to scale the six-foot chain-link fence as best as she could. It was a clumsy, horribly awkward process, and Lorraine nearly fell off more than once, but after a minute of raking her arms and tearing her jeans on stray lengths of wire, she finally managed to clamber over the threshold and into Atlantic Island Park proper.

Then-

Suddenly, Dipper was back in the corridor, the memory door rudely slamming shut behind him.

He tried the other doors, but all of them were barred too well for him to get inside; nothing could budge the security here, not even Dipper's attempts to summon up the power of his own imagination: even turning his feet into jackhammers and his hands into blowtorches didn't do any good, for the doors refused to cut, crack, break, or shatter in any meaningful way. In the end, Dipper had to accept the simple fact that if Lorraine didn't want anyone opening the doors, there wasn't much he could do about it, not if he wanted to find what he was looking for.

Of course, just because he couldn't get in didn't mean the memory was completely off-limits: there were voices issuing from the memories beyond each gate, and while most were too faint or too distant to recognize, it was possible to catch a few sentences if he listened at the right doors.

"A lot of people idolize their children," snarled Lorraine's voice, her tone thick with repressed rage. "You hear them talking about their kids, and just the way they talk... their fucking voices make me wanna vomit. 'My angel likes to read,' 'And little Johnny is so good on the piano...' FUCK THOSE PEOPLE! You give up nine months of your life carrying them, you traumatize yourself giving birth to them, and then you spend the rest of your life as their slave: wiping asses, mopping up piss, feeding them – little life sucking monsters who take and take and take until… We all go insane. Any parent who pretends otherwise is just dishonest. That's called choice-supportive bias. I am honest: Callum really grinds my gears, and he owes me everything. Everything. It would serve the little fuck right if I just abandoned him."

Behind another door, another voice was whispering: it was a man's voice - or something like it, anyway - low, gurgling, and buzzing, the tiniest hint of a mocking chuckle hanging off every word. Dipper couldn't be sure, but there was something about the voice that reminded him of Bill.

"Poor child," the alien voice chortled. "He tried so hard to do what he taught! He even left you a trail of breadcrumbs... but the park is so hungry..."

"Where is he?" Lorraine's voice demanded.

"The Witch has him now, has both of you. No happy ending here, I'm afraid."

Lorraine shuddered, and when next she spoke, she did so in a terrified whimper. "Just... just leave me a lone..."

"Fool. You always were."

Another door, and Lorraine's voice issued again – but now raw with terror, a near-frantic scream of "They're taking my baby away from me!"

And behind a fourth door, Lorraine – her voice broken and close to tears – whispered, "I never wanted to be the Witch, but… I am… aren't I?"

And as Dipper reached the edge of the corridor and the reinforced doors finally began petering out, the eerie calm of the passageway was rent by an earsplitting scream of horror and grief – one drowned out by a dull roar of buzzing bees.

---

The next door in line opened on the park's exterior once again, this time at dawn.

Lorraine now stood at the edge of the parking lot – and if she had looked bad before, now she looked like a corpse. Her face was chalk-white; her hair was a disarrayed bird's nest, frosted with dust and garlanded with cobwebs; her neck and face had been lacerated in a dozen places, as if she'd flung herself through a thornbush; what little makeup she'd been wearing had run down her face in teary rivulets. And even in the pale morning light, Dipper couldn't mistake the mess on her hands for anything other than blood. Rather a lot of blood, in fact. But worst of all were the eyes: even on the truly bad days of her life, Lorraine's eyes had never seemed so distant, so unfocussed, so… dead.

As Dipper watched, Lorraine peered into the distance, waiting until the Sheriff's patrol car appeared on the road, and then flagged it down with an unenthusiastic wave of her arm. As soon as the blood on her hands was in view, the car skidded to a halt right next to her. After a stunned pause, the Sheriff rolled down the window and asked if Lorraine was alright.

"Is there still a holding cell free at your office?" she asked, hoarsely.

"Er… yeah, we haven't had any drunk and disorderlies in the last twenty-four hours. Why?"

"I think I should go there as quickly as possible… and stay there."

Reluctantly, the Sheriff ushered her into the backseat of the patrol car, behind the security window – though he didn't handcuff her first. Perhaps he didn't believe that she'd done anything wrong, or perhaps he just couldn't imagine Lorraine being a threat. Given that she hadn't shown any signs of magical powers or the ability to self-resurrect, Dipper had to admit that Lorraine didn't come across as especially imposing even when slimed up to her elbows in blood.

Once they were off, the cab was silent for several minutes, until at last the Sheriff asked what had happened.

"He's dead," said Lorraine, her voice a deathly monotone. "Callum's dead."

There was a confused pause from the front seat.

"Who?"

For the first time, Lorraine's face registered a change in expression. Now, she looked almost as confused as her driver. "My son," she said, a hint of indignance in her voice now.

"…Lorraine, you don't have a son."

Lorraine almost seemed to physically recoil at this. "What," she hissed.

"I'm sorry, but unless there's some kid you've had hidden away all these years, then you don't have any children. It's a matter of public record: there's never been anyone by the name of Callum Maillard in Kingsmouth or any other region of Solomon Island."

"A matter of public… you've seen him! You've seen him with your own eyes, Bannerman! You gave me a ticket for leaving him in the car when he was little! You told me that I needed to get help!"

"Lorraine-"

"Ask anyone in town – ask Norma or Carrie or any one of the goddamn doctors I've taken him to in the last five years! They'll tell you all about him!"

"I really think you need to calm down, Lorraine-"

"My son was real!" Lorraine howled. "DON'T TRY TO PRETEND HE WASN'T!"

"I'm not pretending anything, I'm just saying that nobody by that name has ever existed in this-"

This time, Lorraine didn't even respond coherently. This time, she only screamed; she screamed and wailed and tore at the barrier between her and the Sheriff with her bare hands, punching and kicking and even biting, ignoring all the Sheriff's efforts to calm her down.

In the end, Dipper exited the memory long before Lorraine finished raging; once again, that sickly, guilt-ridden feeling was making its way through the pit of stomach, that nagging sensation that he was once again a voyeur in Lorraine's most private, painful memories. Besides, it wasn't as if he was going to learn anything new by watching this breakdown play out. So, he left for the corridor and made his way for the next memory available.

The final memory of the maximum-security corridor – the only other door that Dipper could get open – showed a small room, spotless and desolate. Lorraine sat alone at a table, hands clamped over her face, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the world; behind her, an official-looking figure was stepping into the room, and judging by the uniformed deputy standing guard on the other side of the door, this was the local Sheriff's office… but was this just office space, or was this the interrogation room? There didn't seem to be much in the way of spotless white walls and two-way mirrors – or mirrors of any kind, really. And contrary to the various police dramas that Dipper had watched on late-night TV, there was no sign of a lawyer anywhere.

Behind her, there was a muffled click as the door swung open a tiny crack, and the deputy muttered, "She's in here, doctor. You sure you don't want someone keeping an eye on you while you're talking with her?"

"No, that's alright. This generally works better one-on-one. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like total privacy while interviewing the patient…"

A moment later, the door clicked shut again, and the figure who'd entered began murmuring for Lorraine's attention, so she reluctantly lowered her hands and looked up. She hadn't changed much since Dipper had last seen her; her hair had been combed a little, the worst of the dust had been swept off, and the cuts on her face and neck had healed slightly… but the dead-eyed look of despair on her face was back and worse than ever now.

Her visitor patted her gently on the shoulder and sat down the opposite side of the table across from the table in front of her… but not before setting a glass jar on the table as well.

"Don't blame yourself, Lorraine," he said softly. "People lose things all the time. Take a deep breath and think about the last place you saw your son."

Dipper blinked in confusion, instantly recognizing the neatly combed blond hair and moustache. It was the ticket-taker again – or rather, the man who'd been photographing the park. What the heck was this guy doing here? Had he actually been a doctor all along, or was this just a ploy to get Lorraine? And what was in that jar? To Dipper's eyes, it looked like a bee was buzzing around in there, but as far as Dipper knew well enough by now, real bees didn't glow.

"It seems like you're the only one who still has that option," said the 'doctor.' "By now, the police have interviewed everyone you suggested, and none of them remember anything. Oh, Carrie Killian managed to hang on to a few snippets of memory by virtue of her powers, but nothing that she'd be able to make sense of without help… and by now, I'd doubt anyone'd listen to the resident 'devil-worshipper.' All records of Callum's existence have vanished, right down to the birth certificates; even the photographs in your home have edited him out of them. So now it's just you and me."

"But how can you-"

"I have my own special talents. I might not know everything, but I know that a child ran into Atlantic Island Park last night, and you pursued him. I was right on the threshold for most of that evening… and I suspect that was all that protected me from whatever erased your son from the memory of Solomon Island. But that raises some very unusual questions about you, doesn't it?"

"I-"

"Have you experienced any supernatural phenomena before last night, Lorraine? Anything you couldn't rationally explain – in your home or in your dreams, perhaps?"

Lorraine didn't answer, but Dipper could tell from the look on her face that she was thinking of the ghosts again.

The doctor/ticket-taker smirked. "Thought so. I'm guessing you're a latent psychic talent, probably not strong enough to be developed into anything truly valuable, but enough for at least an occasional Second Sight. I'm betting Callum may have had a trace as well, hence this 'trail of breadcrumbs' you mentioned. And maybe, just maybe…"

He eyed the jarred bee on the desk in front of him, which was now glowing even brighter than before. "Would you look at that," he mused. "It's reacting to your presence. It's as I suspected: you might be exactly what I've been looking for."

"What is it?"

"It's a Bee, of course. Or at least, it's the image of one, enchanted through sympathetic magic – I can't afford to bring the real thing in here – but the connection to the specimen we have back at headquarters is strong enough for us to measure its potential affinity with you. And it's that affinity that makes you arguably the most valuable person on this entire island, Lorraine."

Lorraine clearly didn't know if she was supposed to be flattered or frightened at the concept, and from what Dipper had seen of her memories, hadn't received much in the way of compliments in her life – so her only reply was a blank stare.

"You this, this creature isn't exactly something you'd ever see in the wild: these can only be found in the depths of the Hollow Earth, dwelling within the trunk of Yggdrasil. They're said to be servants of Gaia, the Immaculate Machine at the heart of Agartha." His smirk grew. "If there's a true god in this rotten little world, Lorraine, you're looking at one of Her angels."

"But… what does this have to do with me?"

"Thought you'd never ask. You see, Lorraine, these little things are symbiotes: they bond with a preselected host, give them all the magical knowledge and power they need to serve as Her agents, even bless them with healing power. The organization I represent has been trying to recruit one of Gaia's Chosen for some time now, but unfortunately, the Bees are very selective about who they bond with; symbiosis doesn't happen very often, and it can occur literally anywhere in the world. So, on the rare occasion when we get word that a Bee has acquired a host, we scramble our forces to sweep them into our ranks as quickly as possible… but by the time we get there, they're already gone. It doesn't matter how quick we are or how quietly we approach: before we can put boots on the ground, our golden goose has already been snapped up by one of our… competitors among the Big Three. If it's not the Templars hunting for new crusaders in their battle against evil, it's the Illuminati sniffing for money-hungry talent that can help them build a global monopoly on supernatural power, and if it's not them, it's the Dragon trying to upset the balance and create chaos. We're outnumbered three to one, Lorraine, and all of them – Reds, Blues, Greens – all of them are hungrier than we are. My organization just doesn't have the resources to pull off recruitment drives, and we're hampered by the kind of bureaucracy that the Big Three don't have to put up with."

There was an awkward silence, as Lorraine visibly wondered how this litany of complaints could possibly apply to her.

"But eventually, some of us figured out that we'd been taking the wrong approach: why bother waiting for a Bee to take a host when you can just acquire a Bee-"

"And select the host yourself," Lorraine finished. "You want me to be the host for that thing?"

"Not everyone's compatible, I'm afraid. At enormous expense, we were able to acquire and contain a Bee, but unfortunately, the damn thing knows it's being forced into a body against its will and rejects the bonding process; we've developed techniques that can guarantee a rapport between symbiote and host, but we still need a candidate with very specific magical traits – ones that can be used as shackles for the Bee. It's taken a lot of trial and error to find the Goldilocks zone, and even longer to find someone who fit the bill… but here you are: our Golden Ticket."

"But you weren't looking for me when this started, were you? You were watching the park."

"Guilty as charged. For now, our investigation into Atlantic Island Park has been shelved: we've been watching that place for the last two years, and we've turned up nothing – or, rather, nothing for our military wing to eliminate and nothing for our applied sciences divisions to make use of. If there is anything useful back there, it's either too weak to be of interest, or too well hidden for us to detect; I suspect the latter, though I've no reasonable way of confirming it. I suspect there's something illusive about the place, warping conscious perceptions and fogging local reality… but of course, I've no way of confirming any of it – not enough to get permission to commit any serious resources to the matter. So, I'm afraid we'll just have to let it lie for the time being."

The man smirked, and added, "Besides, you're much more interesting. So, as soon as I reported my findings, I was sent back here as a talent scout."

The talent scout stood up, absently straightening his tie as he did so. "Right now, I'm here to make you a quite literally unprecedented offer: if you agree to accept symbiosis and become one of our new elite operatives, you will find yourself the heir to powers that most human beings can only dream of – resurrection, dimensional travel, instant esoteric knowledge, magic on tap with no need for anima sources or blood… and that's only the beginning. As one of our elite operatives, you'll receive a very generous salary, private housing, access to military resources, even a bit of political influence if you play your cards right. So… what do you say?"

He pushed the jar over the tablet towards her, as if expecting her to open it and allow the Bee to bond with her right there and then – even though the glowing bug in the jar was just an illusory representation of the real thing.

So this is how it happened, Dipper thought. This is why she's so powerful! Now all I have to do is figure how to get the Bee out of her.

But to Dipper's surprise, Lorraine pushed the jar back across the table.

"No," she said quietly.

The talent scout blinked in astonishment. "I beg your pardon?"

"I'm not interested in anything you have to offer."

"Not even the money? You really want to go back to living in that rat-infested dump you call home?"

"I'm not going home," said Lorraine, flatly. "I'm going back to my cell, and I'll stay there until Bannerman finds enough evidence to get me sent to prison. Even if nobody remembers Callum, he saw the blood on my hands; he knows I did something horrible, and once he finds the mess down in the House of Horrors, he'll have to charge me with something. I might even be lucky enough to get the blame for all those missing kids, and that'll be enough to have me locked up for the rest of my natural life. Maine doesn't have the death penalty, but people like me don't do well in prison: once the other inmates figure out what I'm in there for, it'll only be a matter of time before they corner me in the showers and shank me to death. And that's the nearest thing to justice I can expect. If there's any real justice in the world, I'll be going straight to Hell."

The talent scout stared at her in open incredulity. "Are you saying you want to die?"

Lorraine sighed. "You've heard my testimony: you know what I've done… and if you've been paying attention, you should know that there's absolutely nothing you can say that could make me forgive myself. And worse still, you're not interested in doing anything about Atlantic Island Park and you can't do anything about it anyway, so there's no chance of Callum resting a little easier. So, based on everything I've heard, do you really think I'd take your offer?"

"I was hoping you might consider this a chance for redemption. Working for us, you might get a chance to save people being preyed upon by the supernatural-"

"Like you saved me?"

"If you remember, I told you we couldn't-"

"And I remember telling you to call for help," Lorraine snarled. "But the moment you saw me, all you could care about was serving me up to your bosses like a piece of meat. You didn't care about Callum, and you didn't care about people being preyed on by the supernatural. Why the hell would I give you or your organization anything?"

She took a deep breath, blinking away tears. "Now get out. I've got the rest of my life already planned out, and frankly, you don't belong anywhere in it."

There was a pause, as the talent scout considered this. Then, he nodded curtly – not at Lorraine, but at something just over her shoulder.

"There is one more thing I forgot to mention about the terms of this bargain," he began.

And then, a white-uniformed man suddenly flickered into visibility right behind Lorraine. Whoever he was, he must have been standing there for the entire conversation, if not longer, because Dipper hadn't seen or heard anyone entering the room since the talent scout's arrival. Before Lorraine could react, the man drew a steel wand from his belt, put it to the back of her head, and muttered a single arcane word.

Instantly, Lorraine jolted violently forward as if she'd just been electrocuted, slumping over the table in a seemingly boneless heap. Her eyes were wide open, flicking wildly from left to right in a panicked dance, but from the looks of things, that was all she could move in the moment.

"I never really needed your consent," the talent scout concluded.

As Lorraine's eyelids began to droop, he glanced up at the white-uniformed man. "How soon can the helicopter be here?"

"Less than half an hour, sir."

"Good. Tell them to have restraints at the ready. Oh, and once you're done, radio Special Ops and have them prepare the specimen for implantation and symbiosis: tell them that our prize is on the way."

And as Lorraine finally lapsed into unconsciousness, the memory ground to a halt – leaving Dipper peering in on a world effectively frozen in mid-step.

---

This certainly shed more light on why his kidnapper was so obsessively devoted to him, and why Lorraine hatred and mistrusted the white-uniformed men so passionately. True, he hadn't fully learned what had become of Callum, but judging by the blood on her hands and what Carrie Killian had said about the park's influence on people, he could guess that it hadn't been pretty. However, two questions stood out more than any other: what was it about the park that erased the memories of everyone but Callum? And more importantly, why did Lorraine think that Dipper was Callum when the two looked almost nothing alike?

Maybe, just maybe, the answers might lie in the jar still sitting on the table in front of him. The talent scout had claimed that the Bee inside wasn't the real thing, but it still might be possible to make some use of it here in the Mindscape; maybe he could learn more by examining it up close, or perhaps it could lead him to whatever he'd need to go in order to disconnect the Bee from Lorraine in the real world. It was a long shot, but for the moment it was all he had.

Tentatively, Dipper stepped up to the table, scooped up the jar, and gave the lid an experimental twist.

The response was nothing short of incredible: one second, the Bee was frozen in the jar, glowing faintly in Lorraine's presence. The next, the inside of the jar had erupted with light, casting a dazzling gold radiance on every inch of the makeshift interrogation room. Startled, Dipper dropped the jar, and though the floor was still cushioned by a somewhat patchy carpet, the glass shattered on impact. And what poured out of the broken jar wasn't a single Bee, but an entire swarm of them, a geyser of illuminous Bees pouring out of the wreckage in an unending stream of dazzling gold and filling the air with a buzzing like a hundred thousand power saws all running at once.

Dipper cringed away, half-expecting to be stung by the swarm, but to his surprise, the Bees didn't even approach him. Instead, they fanned outwards across the walls, layering every surface with an undulating mass of insects, until the interrogation room itself seemed to change: the flimsy walls, threadbare carpets, and cheap furniture softened and vanished beneath the layers of Bees, until at last they had flattened out into the familiar hexagons of a honeycomb. This was no longer Lorraine's memory, the but the dream of a hive.

SWEEETLING.

Dipper blinked. Was it just his imagination, or had the buzzing sounded almost like spoken words for a moment?

SWEETLING, LISTEN TO US. WE HAVE LITTLE TIME.

"Are you… are you the Bee inside Lorraine?" he asked, raising his voice slightly over the roar of the swarm.

NOT A BEE. ALL OF THEM.

"Oh," Dipper mumbled. "Right. Hive mind. That makes sense."

WE ARE THE BUZZING. WE ARE THE EDUCATION PROTOCOL. WE ARE THE HONEYCOMB INSIDE THE LION. WE ARE AS YOU HEARD IN THE MEMORY: SERVANTS OF THE IMMACULATE MACHINE. PLEASE, LISTEN, SWEETLING. LORRAINE WILL WAKE SOON, AND YOUR EXPLORATION OF HER MIND WILL NOT BE ABLE TO CONTINUE. YOU MUST ROUSE HER FROM THE WAKING NIGHTMARE; YOU MUST SHOW HER THE TRUTH.

"Why can't you do that? You're supposed to have the power to give her instant esoteric knowledge, right?"

For the first time, the buzzing chorus sounded oddly regretful.

SHE WILL NOT LISTEN TO US ANYMORE. SHE PERCEIVES OUR WORDS AS PAIN. WE WERE TOO HARD ON HER AT THE MOMENT OF BONDING. SHE HAS DEAFENED HERSELF TO OUR WORDS FOR THE SAKE OF HER OWN SANITY. NOW ONLY YOU CAN REACH HER. ONLY YOU CAN SHOW HER THE DIFFERENCE.

"Brilliant! How am I supposed to do that?"

WE CANNOT SAY EVERYTHING: YOUR MIND IS FRAGILE. IF WE TELL YOU ALL, YOU WILL BREAK. IT HAS BEEN SEEN BEFORE. WE CANNOT GIVE YOU THE STRENGTH TO REND THE LION. YOU CAN ONLY ENDURE THIS MUCH BECAUSE YOU HAVE FELT THE TOUCH OF THE ELDRITCH BEFORE. THE PYRAMID LEFT SCARS INSIDE YOUR SKULL… BUT BILL IS NOT THE ONLY ALL-SEEING EYE.

"…what."

TAKE HEART, SWEETLING. WE CAN SHOW YOU THE BEGINNING OF THE PATH. MAMA DUCK MUST LEARN THE TRUTH. YOU MUST FIND THE HIDDEN TREASURES. ONE IS UP.

"Huh?"

YOU WILL FACE HORROR/HAVE FACED HORROR/MIGHT FACE HORROR. APOLOGIES: TENSE IS SUCH A PROBLEM FOR US. THE ENEMY HAS LEFT/WILL LEAVE TRAPS FOR YOU. SOMETIMES MAMA DUCK'S INSTINCTS CAN BE TRUSTED.

WE CAN GIVE YOU A GLIMPSE OF WHAT YOU WERE/ARE/WILL HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR; IT MIGHT BE ENOUGH. BUT REMEMBER, SHE IS NOT WHAT SHE SEEMS, AND NEITHER IS THE TOP HAT. NOT ALL OLD MEN ARE THE SAME.

YOU MUST BE CAUTIOUS.

"Yeah," Dipper sighed. "I got that. Could you maybe try making sense for a little while?"

BEWARE THE KING OF SWORDS IN HIS SAPPHIRE CROWN. HE HAS YOUR GRUNKLE.

"Wait, WHAT?!"

BEWARE THE HERMIT. TEETH AND TOPHATS. YOU'VE MET HIS CHILDREN IN YOUR WORLD, BUT HE CANNOT BE APPEALED TO. SOME BONDS CANNOT BE SO EASILY BROKEN, AND SOME BLOOD WILL ALWAYS BE POISONED. BEWARE THE GREED THAT CAN EAT CHEW HOLES IN SPACE.

"No, no, no! Get right back to what you were saying about my Grunkle! Who has him? And which Grunkle?! Come on, we don't have all night!"

WHAT IS TIME TO US? WE STAND OUTSIDE.

EVERYTHING HAS HAPPENED. EVERYTHING WILL HAPPEN. EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING… RIGHT… NOW.

And with that, the world around them erupted into light, sending Dipper hurtling out of the Mindscape and back into the real world – but not before one last image flickered into Dipper's brain.

It took a little while for him to work out what he was looking at, for though he eventually recognized the charred ceiling of Room 13 of the Overlook Motel, the figure standing over his POV was completely unrecognizable: its face had been smudged out, every feature smoothed into an expressionless mass of skin where all the usual attributes should have been… and in front of the faceless expanse, another face hovered in mid-air, covering the head below it like a mask. But then he noticed the clothes that this strange figure wore, and Dipper realized with a jolt of shock that this was how Lorraine saw him.

His real face had been erased, and Callum's face – now aged twelve years old – had been crudely pasted in front of it. And with the Bees holding the image in place with perfect clarity, he could see that the vision was marred, as if someone had touched a piece of film with their bare hands, the air itself stained and smeared by greasy fingerprints.

But was this another sign of Lorraine's insanity… or had someone directly tampered with Lorraine's mind?

---

Back in the real world, Dipper lurched awake to find himself back in the treehouse, half slumped over the couch. From the looks of things, he'd only been asleep for perhaps an hour or two, for it was still extremely dark and cold outside.

Lorraine was still asleep, but only lightly; every now and again, one eye would open ever-so-slightly, only to wink shut just as quickly. On tiptoes, Dipper got to his feet and began cleaning up the candles, extinguishing any that hadn't smouldered out on their own; the last thing he needed was questions about why he'd set up a ritual circle around the couch.

But what was he supposed to do now? Was he really supposed to just follow the instructions of a bunch of bees that supposedly moonlighted as angels for a mechanical goddess within the Hollow Earth? It sounded insane, and more importantly, it sounded just vague enough to make Dipper nervous. After all, he'd already suffered one eldritch monstrosity playing him like a puppet – did he really trust the Bees enough to give them the same opportunity? For all he knew, they could be worse than Bill, especially given that they'd helped drive Lorraine crazy (unwittingly or otherwise).

And besides, hadn't he learned anything from Grunkle Stan? This wasn't his problem; in point of fact, it wasn't even his dimension, and after being dragged from one end of this hateful little island to the next, he really didn't feel like trying to fix whatever issues this place was hiding up its sleeves. He owed nothing to this world or its people, least of all Lorraine; he'd felt a little guilty about intruding on her brain, sure, maybe even a little sorry for her, but that didn't mean that she had any right to his help – not after everything she'd done in the last couple of hours. The most important thing he needed to do was to escape, meet up with Mabel and the others, and get the heck out of dodge before it got any worse.

In fact…

He peered cautiously out the treehouse window. Right now, the coast looked relatively clear: no Ak'Ab could be seen, and though dawn was still distant, it might be possible for him to slip away without any of the bugs noticing. True, he didn't know where he might find the others from there, but perhaps the safest step might be to head straight to the Overlook; maybe one of them might have remained behind, just to hold the fort. More to the point, Lorraine might be waking up, but she probably wouldn't stay that way for long; in fact, it looked like her sleep was deepening even as Dipper watched. So why not take advantage of the moment and slip away, before Lorraine realized that her "son" had gone AWOL?

So, as soon as he was certain that the ritual circle was completely cleaned away, Dipper began stealthily creeping towards the distant shape of the ladder as fast as he could without rousing Lorraine. It wasn't easy: the treehouse was old and the tree it had been built on even older, so it was prone to creaking loudly if you put a foot wrong.

But for someone who was supposedly "waking up," his captor seemed sleepier than ever, and didn't stir even at the loudest creaks. Before long, the ladder was within reach. All he had to do now was scale the damn thing all the way to the ground and run like heck, hoping that Lorraine and the Ak'ab wouldn't look back.

And then, just as he was beginning to think that he was officially home free, Lorraine let out a low, pained groan. A quick glance confirmed that she was starting to stir once again – this time more vigorously than ever. Dipper froze, half-expecting her to lurch upright and charge after him, and when Lorraine's mouth lurched open, he was certain that the next word she spoke was going to screamed after him loud enough to alert every single Ak'ab in the forest.

But instead of screaming, she only whimpered; her eyes were shut, as if still dreaming – and perhaps she was – and she was beginning to tremble, ever-so-slightly.

"No," she mumbled helplessly. "No, no, no, not again, please… stop it…"

And as she spoke, her hands were beginning to creep upwards towards her face, fingers contorting into claws.

"I can't… no, I… you're hurting… please, I'm sorry, I can't let you go, they won't let me, they forced me just as much as they forced you, don't you understand-"

Her sentence ended in a muffled whimper of pain; slowly but surely, she was beginning to double over, curling herself into a ball as if to shield herself from an oncoming attack. The trembling was worse now, her hands now clasping her skull with hooked fingers.

"…no! No! Stop! Stop! GET OUT! GET OUT OF ME! LEAVE ME ALONE!"

She was hurting herself, now, her fingers raking at either side of her face, clawing through skin and tearing out clumps of hair as she tried to assuage whatever was attacking her. In her agonies, she finally straightened out and began furiously clawing at her throat, her nails ripping open fresh cuts all along her neck – almost as if she was trying to cut something out of her.

Dipper was dimly aware that he should have seized the opportunity and started running a long time ago. After all, he needed to get the hell out of here before she fully roused herself, and even if he did admit to feeling a little sympathy for her, he didn't need to worry about her health; after all, even if she ended up clawing herself open, it wasn't as if she'd stay dead, was it?

But at the time, he couldn't bring himself to flee. It didn't feel right to leave her alone like this, not after everything he'd seen in her mind. Yes, she'd kidnapped him, yes, she'd endangered his life in far too many different ways to count, yes, she'd pretty much threatened Marianne Chen with death for nothing, and yes, she hadn't exactly been Mother of the Year material… but he couldn't just abandon her to this fit, or whatever it was.

So, against his own better judgement, he found himself hurrying over and grabbing Lorraine's arm as it lanced downwards at her closed eyes, doing his best to shake her back to consciousness as he did so. He'd meant to shout her name, or at the very least to say something that would rouse her from the nightmare…

…but what emerged from his mouth was a childish shriek of "Mommy, stop!"

Instantly, Lorraine's eyes shot open, and in a blind panic, she lurched bolt upright. Breathless, she looked from her own bloodstained fingers to the figure standing beside her.

"You were hurting yourself," Dipper explained weakly.

Was it his imagination, or had his voice sounded a little different just now?

For a moment, Lorraine could only stare at him, her eyes wide and incredulous – almost as if she didn't recognize him. Perhaps, just for a moment, whatever delusion or enchantment she'd been under had failed and she'd actually seen Dipper for who he really was… but just as quickly, the illusion seemed to reassert itself: within a few seconds, recognition sparked in Lorraine's eyes, and she was once again in Callum's presence.

"Did I hurt you?" she asked quietly. There were tears in her eyes now.

Dipper shook his head, not trusting his own voice.

"Mommy never wanted to hurt you, Callum. You know that, right? Mommy would never let anything happen to you."

Dipper nodded silently.

"I-it's just… Mommy has trouble sometimes. Sometimes she says things that… well, things that don't sound right, but she doesn't mean anything by it. I'll be better from now on, I promise. Everything's going to be okay, Little Duck. Everything's going to be just fine. Everything's going to…"

She started to sob.

And in spite of all that had happened that day, Dipper found himself almost instinctively reaching out to comfort her. Slowly, not entirely sure what he was doing, he very gently wrapped his arms around her. Trembling, Lorraine returned the hug, clinging to him as if afraid he might vanish if she were to let him go.

For the next few minutes, she did little else but hold him, shivering and sniffling as she gradually recovered. By now, most of the cuts on her face and neck were already sealing shut, but whatever she'd experienced in her nightmare was still fresh in her mind, so it took a while for Lorraine to exhaust her fear and grief… and by then, both of them were extremely drowsy.

One of the major downsides to exploring the mindscape via the spell was that, as Dipper had discovered after his first meeting with Bill, you didn't truly sleep: you dozed, never really getting a full night's sleep no matter how long the voyage went, and so you always woke up feeling a little more exhausted than you should. Dipper and Mabel had spent most of the day after that first encounter with Bill drifting in and out of consciousness, to the point that Stan had worried that they might be in shock over losing the Mystery Shack, while Soos had nearly crashed his car after nodding off at the wheel.

Here, it was no different… and Dipper had already endured a lot in the last few hours. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, fatigue was rapidly catching up with him. Before long, Lorraine was dozing off as well, sinking back into the moth-eaten couch with Dipper held gently in her arms. And though Dipper should have been thinking of exit strategies or the location of the treasure that the Bees had told him about, all he could think about was the warmth of Lorraine's arms, about how good it was to sleep in comfort and safety for the first time since he'd arrived in this world.

It's not as if I can go anywhere, he thought. I might as well stay here and get some rest. At least mommy's here to keep me safe.

And before he could so much as correct his own thoughts, he was fast asleep.

---

A/N: Any guesses as to what might happen next? Any ideas what's going on? Let me know!

Need a hint? Check the code:

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Gsv yvhg-ozrw kozmh lu gsv Prmt ozrw gl dzhgv
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Li rh gszg dsvvo z sznhgvi yzoo?