Prologue: Return to Gravity Falls
It's the beginning of a new summer for everyone in the United States, we didn't yet pass the first few days of the month of June: today the Sun glows bright in the clear blue skies, emanating enough heat from its solar rays to create a moderately hot afternoon. With these weather conditions, one would expect to find happiness surrounding the people found within an observer's nearest environment.
However, there is one person in particular who isn't feeling happy today. At the moment, this person is located inside a city bus driving in a public highway where no signs are shown to indicate possible destinations. Inside the bus, all the front and middle row seats are full of passengers. But what is strange about them is the fact that every single one is looking backwards in the direction of the furthest seats of the bus. A few whispering sounds could be heard from the people: "That guy is totally crazy! He's wearing all those hot clothes in the middle of such a hot day!"; "Man, I don't get why he has to hide his face like that…"; "Mommy, that man's face is scary…. He looks very freaked out!", "Oh no, it's not like that, sweetie. What you're seeing is a mask, and not a face. Still, it's creeping me out…"
The person being watched by everyone is sitting alone without anyone else sitting nearby. No one could understand if they were mentioning a man or a woman, as the figure has all its facial and body physical features covered by a variety of clothing. The only thing visible about it is its clear tall stature. A tall black top hat with a white stripe wrapping the edge of the border between the bottom of the crown and the brim covers the head, a theatrical mask divided in the middle by a line that marks two halves: one which is coloured white, while the other is coloured blue turquoise; stands out for representing an expression of pure dread engraved on its surface, causing the people in the bus to be scared by the way it realistically manifests the emotion of horror, while hiding the real emotions of the face behind this act; while the rest of the figure's body is hidden by a light grey trench coat and its fingers are coated with black leathered gloves.
Yet, there remains an uncanny trait about this character's hands that strike anyone looking at them for the first time: both hands have six fingers on them! Who could possibly imagine seeing such a thing on a person?! All of the twelve fingers trembled whistle their master was fidgeting them, indicating a sign of the stranger being in a state of anxiety.
"Oh, go ahead. You people can look at me all day long and you still wouldn't understand that, behind this actor's façade of a mask, I hide a deeper feeling of fright more mind and heart crushing than any fear you've ever felt in all of your lives… If only you could have seen all the visions that appear in my dreams…"
Very suddenly, the scenery shifts from the bus crowd to a flashback of a realm surrounded by darkness, all of its space is completely dark, except for one little part occupied by the shape of a yellow triangle opening a wide blue eye, as if it were staring deeply into the eyes of a hidden watcher. Following this sight, the triangular figure let out a psychopathically maniacal laughter, while simultaneously switching his image with flashes of the silhouette of a long-bodied dragon, with the latter hovering in the background while burning everything standing in the middle of its path through dark purpled flames exhaled out of his ferocious mouth…
The mysterious stranger of the back seats couldn't stop thinking that perhaps these two nightmares are connected to the events that took place in Gravity Falls during the summer of 10 years ago: "Damn…. How could I have been so foolish by thinking this living nightmare ended all those years ago?! I have a bad feeling that he might still be alive, that forsaken demon who almost destroyed the world back then! If I'm right, he might bring along a second Weirdmageddon if he still holds all of the power he had in the past…"
The stranger stopped twisting the fingers around its hands like intertwining tree branches, and proceeded to rub the chin of the mask with his right hand while whispering "And moreover, who or what is that dragon I saw in the second nightmare? Is it in any way connected to this possible second Weirdmaggedon? Is it an ally of the one-eyed devil? Or is it an enemy that plans to fight with him over world domination? Or is it an ally for the time being, but plans to betray him later on? What is it planning to do to our world?! I want to know all the answers to these questions, and yet I have none!"
"….. No, it doesn't help anything to think every possible interpretation to these dreams until I reach mental exhaustion, I can only hope to find out the meaning of the dragon in due time. My friends at Gravity Falls will understand all of my problems when I arrive at the town and tell them everything I've experienced. Well…. Maybe it's best not to tell them all the dead bodies I've also seen in these visions."
As the stranger thought deeply on the last words, a series of mental images started racing through his own mind, not a single one of them was pleasant to watch: all of them consisted in several scenes of men and women dead in several positions, from the victim being drenched in their own blood to a severely burned body…. These deaths keep haunting the stranger to the point of almost making him lose his sanity. "If they hear about these horrible scenes, it will be too much for their heads to take this all in. They'll have enough trouble already dealing with the fact we may have to face two supernatural creatures at once, and I don't want to burden them more than this."
After this internal monologue ended, the stranger spent practically the rest of the voyage to Gravity Falls very quietly on its seat without saying out loud a single word, neither did any relevant thought cross through its head. Eventually, the passengers of the bus got tired of constantly looking at him without anything out of the ordinary happening and returned to being focused on their own trip.
A few hours passed by, every traveller in the bus reached their respective destination before the final stop of the career. All but one: the stranger still sits stoically on the same spot without having moved a single inch since the beginning, however what's different this time is that the stranger fell asleep in the middle of the trip, bored at the prospect of the amount of time it would take for the bus to reach its final destination. Now, the vehicle is finally entering the woods landscape serving as the signature symbol marking the town of Gravity Falls. After a few minutes of driving through the dense canopies of the pine trees, the driver and the stranger reach the lawn facing the front entrance of the Mystery Shack.
At that moment, the mysterious stranger woke up from his sleep when the driver told him directly "We're here, at the place where we both agreed to let you off."; "Than you, you're a man who clearly keeps his word."; "Yeah…. But you listen to me, I'll be very lucky if my bosses only cut my salary for driving to a place off the career charts. I could be fired for doing this favour for you, so you better give me now a little bit of a compensation to pay up for the losses this little voyage might cost me.".
Although the driver couldn't see, the stranger was bearing an expression of discontent in its hidden face when he knew what the driver was talking about, evident by the grunting sounds coming directly from the mouth of the listener. Afterwards, the stranger picks from the breast pocket of the coat a small pack full of 100-dollar bills, counting every bill and subsequently delivering them to the driver's hands.
"Thanks for the payment, stranger. Hope you enjoy your stay at Gravity Falls this summer! Oh, and if I were you, I would take that weird mask off, on the account of not wanting to creep out the people in my social life. Seriously, that thing scares the living soul out of me."
Once again, the listener became annoyed after hearing these harsh words coming out of the driver, but didn't respond back to him and proceeded to take out all its luggage out of the trunk of the bus. Then, dragging the belongings through the soil and later the wooden floors of the entrance, the stranger knocked on the front door.
Sitting behind the reception desk, a tall man dressed in a formal suit and a reddish fez on top of his head with Hispanic ascendency, large and wide eyes, buck teeth, a poorly shaved moustache and a miniature hawk nose reads a comic book issue of Batman to relax while no costumers entered the gift shop. The man's name is Soos Ramírez and he seems to be enjoying his free time, until the door bell rings and he lifts himself up from his chair in a fit of excitement, thinking he's ready to receive a new costumer "Come on in, the door is open!".
Naturally, Soos' reaction turned out to be radically different from the one he was expecting when he saw the stranger's figure appear in front of him. The joyous smile on his face quickly turned to a frown marked by fear and horror at the unexpected sight before his eyes, followed by a long gasp of surprise. Instead of receiving the person with open arms, the shop owner began by asking him cautiously while stuttering "W-W-Who are y-y-you?!".
"Hey, calm down there, Soos. I'm just an old friend who came to visit and spend another summer in the Mystery Shack."
"H-H-How do you know my name? And when did you spend a summer in here? Arrgh! You must be a robber then! You've come to take away all the goods inside my hidden stash!"
"N-N-No, you're mistaken! You know me better than you think you do!"
"N-N-Noo, you're lying! Stay away from me and stay away from this place!" At this point of the dialogue, Soos entered in a state of panic and picked up a charged electrical taser, pointing it at the menacing stranger. The weapon was ready to be used against his enemy, seen by the electrical charges travelling the wires. "If you don't get out of this house by the count of ten, then… then… I'll have no choice but to take you down!"
"Soos, stop that! I'm not your enemy, I swear to God!" Like Soos, the stranger entered in a state of panic almost as intense as the feelings that passed through the body of the Mystery Shack owner. So much, that the six fingered hands were forced to lift themselves up, expecting to receive any kind of mercy from the attacker.
But Soos instantly recognized to whom those freakish hands belong to, a reaction of shock, surprise and relief followed this revelation, and shortly afterwards Soos lowers his taser and greets the stranger with a warm smile upon his face "Mr. Pines! You're back! I mean…. Mr. Ford Pines, sir! Sorry, I often think about your brother when I call you by your last name, I hope that's okay… Then, why are you wearing that creepy thing on your face? Is that a Summerween prank? Because if it is, it worked too perfectly. And…"
The man shook his hand in denial of that statement, which shook Soos' feelings even more, so the man had to disprove his small deduction "I'm sorry, you weren't close enough. You got my last name right, but I'm not the man that you think I am. You know me even better than you know my Grunkle Ford."
The mysterious man didn't waste any time revealing his true identity to his old friend: with his right hand he grabs hold of the top hat covering his head and tosses it aside, removes his leather gloves very slowly, consequently tossing them to the ground; but he handles the mask more carefully, as he approaches his left hand to remove the mask very carefully, and, before showing his face, the stranger turns around on his back to keep the mask safe inside his trench coat. Only then does he finally turn around: his facial features show a grown man with shaggy long brown hair, pale skin, a few bags under his eyes, a medium sized red nose and a beard that hasn't been shaved for at least three or four days. Instead of Ford Pines, his great-nephew Dipper Pines took his own place.
With a genuine ecstatic smile drawn upon his face, Soos runs at full speed to Dipper's reach, opening his arms as widely as he could to hug one of his best friends with full force. Soos' hug surprised Dipper himself, who didn't seem to remember the force of a hug given by a man with a strong body build, leaving his flesh slightly sore for about half a minute before saying: "Argh! That hurt a little bit, Soos. But it okay, I missed you too". Dipper finished his sentence, retributing Soos' previous smile with a small smile that was bearing the same kind of happiness.
"Dude, I haven't seen you in, like, a million years! Well… at least not since the Summer you spent at Gravity Falls when I met you and Mabel….. Speaking of which, where is she?"
"Uh…. She's not with me this time. I thought it would be better for her sake that she shouldn't come with me this Summer."
Soos wasn't too satisfied to hear that reply from Dipper, since he also missed hanging around with Mabel, but he was also suspicious since he rarely saw the two twins separated and alone, which made him question this response "Oh…. That's too bad, I've always loved watching how the Mystery Twins could solve any problem together, you two were a great team. But…. What do you mean when you say you didn't bring her for her own good…?"
"It's a long story Soos, I would prefer if we only talked about it later. So, don't ask any more questions until I give you my permission, okay?"
Soos didn't respond back to Dipper's request, both friends just stayed still where they were, with a brief silence following this conversation, signalling the fact that Soos understood Dipper's wish. After this awkward moment, Soos decided to move the conversation to other topics "So, Dipper…. Listen, I'm curious about your hands. What did you do with them for you to have exactly six fingers like Mr. Ford? How did you get two extra fingers on each hand?"
"Oh, these little guys? For starters, they're just the result of a small perk I have for the fingers in my right hand, if you want I can show you the trick behind this illusion of having six fingers in one hand. I warn you, though, you might be even more surprised from what I'm about to show you. Are you ready to see it?"
Naturally, Soos' unending curiosity made him nod his head without the slightest hesitation from his part, wanting to see what his friend had made with his right hand. Acting accordingly, Dipper extended his left index finger with the intent to press the bottom of the right index finger, the bottom of the middle finger that stands immediately next to the previous finger, and the bottom of both his ring and pinkie fingers.
What followed these gestures was a spectacular display of the relatively complex workings of robotic engineering in a human being: all of the four fingers that Dipper touched rose up from the very spot where they were standing, with the index and pinkie fingers showing each a needle of their own that was previously injected into the parts of Dipper's flesh where there weren't supposed to be finger. Next, each half of the four fingers facing towards the direction of the position of each finger's complementary partner somehow managed to retract inside the finger itself. However, what was shown defied every single component of the anatomy of human fingers: instead of showing muscle and bone tissue, the inside of the four fingers showed a metallic skeleton with all of its parts as intricately connected as are all the combined parts of the human musculature and skeleton for the hand fingers. Finally, the robotic wires of the four fingers conjoined with each other in sets of two, with the members of each pair joining themselves with their other twin finger to form a whole finger. In the end, the newly assembled fingers lowered themselves down until inserted into two big holes, circled each by a metallic finger, turning Dipper's hand back to normal with only four fingers occupying their respective space.
Soos' utter surprise at seeing this trick in action is of a complete appalment, to the point of not being possible to describe the complete details of this state of spirit. The only physical reactions visible that show how Soos feels are expressed in the fact that his eyes are wider than normal, even for a man with eyes larger than the average person, and in the trembling skin that matches that of a person who just saw an extraterrestrial ship land on Earth.
"W-W-W-WHAT WAS THAT ALL ABOUT? THAT WAS FREAKIN' AWESOME, DUDE! HOW DID YOU DO THAT WITH YOUR FINGERS?!"
"Oh, to explain how I can do this I have to tell you another very long story, and I don't think I have that much time to spare and you probably don't have much patience to hear it either. How about we leave this one to another time?"
"Y-Y-Yeah, sure we can. Still, that's a very cool gadget you have there, Dipper. With fingers like those I could finish some of my chores way more easily."
"Thanks, Soos. Oh, and before you ask, the extra fingers on my left hand are just spare prosthetics that I stuck to my skin with extra strong glue. These little wonders only work on my right hand." As he was telling this information to Soos, Dipper removed the said fingers from his left hand and put them into one of the pockets of the interior of the trench coat.
"Dude, why don't we go to the kitchen to put the conversation up to date? Listen, I can even prepare a cup of coffee for you and for me, I'll warm up my coffee with my taser!"
Soos rose his taser in the air once more, only this time he did so to aim it at the nearest cup of coffee had at his hand and zapped it with the electrical discharges of the stunning weapon. Then, he reached for the rim of the cup with his lips to drink the coffee, but obviously he caught an electrical shock for drinking from a discharged beverage. But despite this, Dipper let out of his mouth a big laughter of amusement at Soos' silly accidents, since he hasn't seen his friend's antics in years and missed those moments.
"Ahahaha! Sure, I could use a big mug of coffee right now. I'm tired from the journey I had to take to get over here." After these last words, Dipper and Soos left the Mystery Shack's gift shop and headed directly to the kitchen.
Once inside the room, Dipper saw one more person sitting in one of the wooden stools, a familiar woman that he already met before: more specifically, it's Soos' long time girlfriend, Melody. Like her boyfriend, her cheerful nature is visible through the naked eye on the ever present smile on her lips, she hasn't changed a bit from the last time she met Dipper, the only difference now is that she's wearing the iconic employee T-shirt of the Mystery Shack where there's a stitched question mark covering almost all of the front part of the shirt. Unlike Soos' old shirt, however, Melody's shirt is coloured dark purple.
All of the three people sat in their places at the eating table, only later would Melody gasp in surprise at the sight of Dipper's new physical appearance since the last time they met personally: "Oh my gosh! A-A-Are you Dipper Pines, the boy who was with me and Soos on our first date and was best friends with him when he was still working for Mr. Pines all those years ago? ….. My, you've really grown into a very handsome young man!"
Dipper wasn't expecting that flirtatious response from a woman who's already taken in a relationship with another man, but nonetheless he still slightly blushed on his cheeks "O-O-Oh, thanks. That's really flattering, Melody."
A brief pause followed this awkward situation, when Dipper intervened once more "So… Oh boy, I haven' seen you two or anyone in Gravity Falls for so many years that I don't even know where to begin. Uhhh, I know, how about you tell me about you two? I'm happy that Soos's been able to keep a girlfriend for this long, are you two happy with each other?"
Melody replied to this question in Soos' place with a natural delightful smile on her face "Of course we're happy with each other. In fact, we're both so amazed to see we've lasted in our relationship so long that we got married last year and settled for one another, once and for all!"
"Oh…. Well, congratulations for your marriage! I'm only sorry for saying this so late in your lives though, but I'm hoping you two stay together for as long as you can!"
"Thanks, dude! But me and Melody are still scared about what the future might bring or not bring for us. I mean, we're still new at this marriage business, so we are just waiting to see how it works out."
"It's okay, Soos. Don't worry, you and Melody are very compatible people and you two have much in common: both in your interests as in your personalities. I think it's improbable for you two to split apart any time soon."
"Anyways… I noticed the shop doesn't have many clients throughout the whole day. What happened here that made the business run so slowly nowadays?"
Soos was the one who answered Dipper's question this time "Yeah… Well, I guess it's because I don't have the same talent that your Grunkle Stan had in the business world. Without a lying and cheating crook like him running the gift shop, most people can see through my honesty when working, and they don't think it's funny or exciting to buy souvenirs from a guy who doesn't make any effort to force them to spend all their vacation money in one place. Ahahaha…"
Instead of being a laughter of real happiness, his response was bearing a certain tone of anxiety, revealing clearly that the couple were passing through some financial difficulties characteristic of Soos' lack of experience in his line of work. Even Melody expressed their problems when she turned her previous wide smile into a melancholic expression of sadness before saying "Yeah… The Mystery Shack is going through some rough patches ever since Mr. Pines and his brother left us to explore the rest of the world. Sadly, until now we only receive the minimum wage for all the tourist trinkets we're able to sell, and in the end the result is that we can only afford the bare minimum conditions to live a normal life. But we don't go on many vacations together, neither do we have enough money to buy most of the other things we want in our lives…"
Dipper rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment after hearing the problems of the couple, responding afterwards "…. Jesus …. I'm sorry to hear all you have to go through just to make a living in here…"
Another pause, longer than any other ones before, put a stop to this unsettling topic of conversation. However, Dipper broke the ice installed for too long by mentioning a problem of his own: in fact, he's going to talk about the main reason that brought him back to Gravity Falls. "Uhhh…. Listen, you two, even though I'm enjoying talking to both of you, and although I'm not saying that I won't be having a good and fun vacation while staying in the Mystery Shack, I have to confess that I didn't come here just to relax with everyone, like I did all those years ago. In fact, the truth is …. I fear that dark times are approaching us. And I'm afraid our worst nightmares didn't end back then. I hope you know what I'm talking about, Soos."
The owner of the Shack didn't need to speak up what thoughts were speeding up through his mind when he heard the last words of Dipper's sentence. The lining of his eyebrows, of his eyes and of his mouth all showed Soos being haunted by feelings of fear, concern and disbelief, all at the same time. He looked deeply into Dipper's eyes, in the hopes that maybe it was all but a prank his friend had come up with just to trick him, with the intention of hiding a more pleasant surprise that would leave him without words.
A few moments passed by before Soos had the courage to talk back to Dipper, and even now he still wasn't less disturbed by the grave news than he was just a minute ago "D-D-Do you mean to tell me…. He's back?!"
"I'm not sure. I have my reasons to believe he might have returned, but nothing bad happened in real life that might have been enough proof to confirm my suspicions. You see…"
Unfortunately, Dipper didn't have his opportunity to tell Soos the nightmares he's been suffering lately related to the present issue, as the gift shop's doorbell rang to announce the entrance of a new costumer. Melody quickly got up from her seat to answer the door, recovering her cheerful smile from before, despite everything she heard from Dipper's mouth "Don't worry, honey. I'll get the door. You stay right here with Dipper, and I'll be back in a minute."
Leaving the room in a flash, both men didn't need to wait long before she returned to the kitchen with almost the same speed with which she had left. This time, however, Melody was bearing the same expression of concern Soos was showing in the moment Dipper revealed to him about the triangle demon that made their lives a living hell "H-Honey, our customer said he wants to talk to you. And only with you, and no one else. It's the same one who came to visit us last week and asked us to keep that mysterious thing safe from other people's hands. You better go now, before he gets fed up of waiting."
Her husband understood the serious nature of this request and didn't hesitate to dress up in his formal attire and put his fez above his head. Then he stood up from his seat, so focused on his current task that he forgot to speak to Dipper, before he left the kitchen, about where he would stay and sleep.
Our protagonist wasn't the slightest bit upset by his friends' behaviour, because he was still feeling as tired as before. He couldn't bring up his energies neither to think properly nor to keep siting still waiting for Soos to finish his meeting with the mystery client. Therefore, Dipper had to force himself to use his last reserves of energies to get up into the attic's bedroom, where he and his twin sister once had stayed as if it were in their own home back in California.
But, unfortunately, he couldn't bring himself past the living room and as a sign of his extreme fatigue, our hero sat down on Stan's reclining armchair in front of the TV screen, too exhausted to get up again. However, Dipper was reluctant in recognizing his current state and tried his best to think away everything he remembered to stay awake "Noooo… I'm not sleepy…. I'm just sitting here to relax a bit… I still have to unpack all of my clothes, my bed sheets, my pillow… And let's not forget to set up my personal laboratory in the room to conduct all the experiments I want… God, all that sounds so boring and hard, it would take far too long to do all those chores… I think… I think…"
Dipper couldn't manage to finish this line of thought, as he quickly fell asleep on the comfort of the armchair before realizing he had done so.
A full hour passed ever since Soos got out of the living area of the Shack to meet up with his unknown client and since Dipper fell asleep in the living room. Until this moment, he's been having a very peaceful sleep without having been disturbed neither by any people entering the room, or by any of the usual nightmares that have been haunting him.
Yet, everything in Dipper's world changed just this very instant: inside his own dreams, he finds himself inside the Mystery Shack's Exhibit Room, where all of the sham exhibits created by Stan were being kept safe. In the centre of the room, he's able to see the shades of two figures talking to each other, as he got closer he realized he's looking directly at Soos talking with another man. The man is very much older than Soos' and Dipper's ages combined, being in his early sixties, but what strikes most about him is his physical appearance of a cowboy living in the Old West: his whole outfit consists of a whole set of cowboy clothes, starting with tall dark browned boots, a beige cowboy vest with a red scarf covering the entirety of his neck, and finally a dark greyed cowboy hat covering his grey hairdo.
His face had the features typical of a manly cowboy of the Old West: he has thick eyebrows furrowing above his dark brown eyes, a long hawk nose stretching itself along the middle line separating his eyes, a large and dried out mouth demanding every moment of the man's attention for him to use his tongue to lick the corners of his lips in order to avoid making his mouth a dried up well, and a few wrinkles spread across the rest of his face to complement with his old age. Not to mention the mildly dark tanned skin he's bearing.
Dipper took a moment of his time to look around and examine his surroundings before uttering in surprise and amazement "W-What is this…? A-Am I still dreaming about being in the Shack, or am I awake and experiencing all this in real life…? Hmmm… I wonder if those two can see or hear me… Let's try testing my theory.".
He hid behind one of the closets harbouring another fake magical or fantastical creature and yelled out loud from the bottom of his lungs "HELLOOOO! CAN YOU HEAR MEEEEEE!?".
Dipper waited no more than a few seconds to watch any reaction to his yell, but neither of the two men responded or became alarmed by the sudden sound of the scream. "Mmm… Okay…. This was weird… But at least it proved this is just a dream. Now, all that's left to do is get closer to hear what they're talking about…"
So, Dipper took a few steps to get closer to Soos and the stranger in a way that he could eavesdrop on their private conversation. He began to hear the stranger speak in a mildly deep masculine voice, catching Soos' attention "Do you have what I've come to pick up, niño?"
Soos acted accordingly to the man's wishes, and reached into his chest with his hand, taking from inside the shirt a very peculiar pendant: forming the shape of an Asian dragon with its scales dyed in blue and brilliant yellow eyes from which was emanating a strange golden glow. He handed the pendant over to the other man, asking him afterwards "Listen… Are you sure you can get rid of this cursed thing? If it ends up in the wrong hands, we could be facing some serious backfire that could delay our work."
"Well, I can't promise I will destroy the pendant, since it's made from a material that's supposed to be indestructible. But I can hide it for the time being until it reaches a hidden place, away from any person living in Gravity Falls. For that, I need you to trust me completely and give me your full cooperation. Can I count on you for that simple task?"
"….. I don't know how much I can trust you after everything you've done to me that affected negatively my life. But…. I suppose that for a thing as important as this, yeah. You've earned enough of my trust."
"Thank you…. What you said meant everything to me, especially coming from your mouth…. Now, go away! Anyone of them could arrive here at any minute now, and only I can deal properly with the situation. So, please, get yourself to safety and don't come back here too early!"
Soos silently obeyed his order and was preparing to leave the exhibit room, but not before shedding about three tear drops that fell upon the wooden planks furnishing the floor.
After Soos left the room, Dipper began to question many aspects of the encounter he had just witness, but decided to sum every thought in a single one "This is one strange non-sensical dream, it's both absurd and strangely realistic at the same time. Could it be possible that…. Hmmm…. I don't know if I should tell Soos about everything I've seen or if I should keep it a secret and hope nothing of this was very important."
However, Dipper was soon proven to be wrong about these thoughts. Very suddenly, the ambience of the Exhibit Room had been replaced by a dark, cold and empty space very similar to a void of Nothingness… Of course, Dipper found himself shocked and terrified at the sight of the sudden change he just experienced, unknowing what to do now to understand what just happened.
He didn't need to wait too long, for a massively giant white eye appeared out of the shadows of this strange place, it would prove to be an all too familiar eyesight. And Dipper confirmed just this insight when he turned his back and looked straight into the slit pupil crossing the middle section of the giant eyeball. His utter shock spiked when he heard the eye talking directly to him in a familiar voice "Well, Well, Well ….. It's been far too long since I've seen you so desperate, pine tree! Or even better, it's been far too long since I've seen you at all! I could never tell the difference, since every time I see you I see a desperate look of terror in your eyes that I can't avoid finding extremely amusing, hahahahahaha!"
"That laugh…. I would recognize that maniacal laugh anywhere …. So, it's true what I've been thinking these last weeks of my life. You're really back to finish what you started, didn't you, BILL CIPHER?!"
"Oooohh… clever deduction you've done there, little Sherlock Holmes. You deserve to be hired and given a position at Scotland Yard just for figuring this out, hahahaha! But, anyhow, you're absolutely right. Did you possibly think a being like me could ever be destroyed by such a cheap trick like the one you used, even if it came from Stanford's brilliant brain?"
"N-N-No…. This is impossible… You were supposed to have been erased inside Stan's mind when Grunkle Ford erased all of his brother's memories… Then, how the hell did you survive the erasure of your own existence?!"
"Ha! You and the bunch of ignorants you call friends don't know anything about how my species works, do you? Let me explain to you how I still live, you fool! You see, I have to admit that you really tricked me when you dressed up Stanley as Stanford and managed to make me enter the wrong mindscape. However! Your little memory erasing trick only destroyed my physical form when I went down along with Stanley's mind! And when that happened, I received a fate even worse than the one I was expecting: I didn't even get the right to have the same physical manifestation of the yellow triangle that I had in people's mindscapes. I was forced to retreat as a mere mindless spirit back, with no body, into this terrible place where both of us are standing, known as the Void, unable to go back into any dimension. And just thinking about the hellish time when I had no influence on anyone or anything makes me so mad!"
While pronouncing the last words of his explanation, Bill's eye transformed into a blazing mini sun as an expression of his anger at its peak, which turned up the heat in the Void, making Dipper sweat bullets, and genuinely frightening him at the sight of Bill's instability. But, after a few seconds passed by, the demon's eye returned to normal and so did Bill's previous serene attitude.
"But, hohoho…., all of my misery disappeared a few months ago when I finally regenerated my adorable little eye. It took me 10 years to recover my eyesight, and along with it a tiny fraction of my power, but it was completely worthy waiting for this moment! Now I can enter people's dreams in their sleep once more, and I can once again terrorize their nights with the induction of nightmares into people's brains that can make them want to gouge their eyes out! Oh, but that's only the beginning of the execution of my plans… Oh yes, as we are still speaking, I'm receiving all the help from my servants that are inhabiting your puny little world to resurrect me and bring me back to my full strength! In fact, it's thanks to their services that I could regenerate my eye."
"What are you talking about, Bill?! Who are these servants of yours?! And how are they helping you to come back to our world?!"
"Ooohh… Look at Mr. Inquisitor in action! Did you really think I'm the type of guy to give the answers to any questions you pose? Hahahaha! No, that would spoil all the fun of watching you mortals squirm in fear of unknowing my true methods! No, you will have to discover all of my plans by yourself. If you're really as smart as you think you are, then you'll succeed in discovering my masterplan in due time."
A long pause followed Bill's monologue, during which his eye kept staring at Dipper without once looking away. After some time, Dipper began to feel a sensation of discomfort resulting from Bill's constant staring. Therefore, he felt the need to break the uncomfortable silence by mentioning more topics related to Bill's purpose "Listen, I understand you're not willing to give away any details of your plans. But can you at least give me a hint of where I should start looking for clues leading to all I want to know?!"
"Mmm… Okay, kid. I like how your determination reminds me very much of Stanford, so I'll help you out by giving you a head start: the next place where the next step of my plan will take place is closer than you think, it's the spot where my mischievous misadventures on Earth started so many years ago. And so, evidently, it's the same spot where your adventures started in the summer of 10 years ago. It's no hard to decipher, pinetree, even a 5-year-old human child could solve this riddle, if it's worthy of being called as such."
Dipper didn't take too much of his time to figure out the answer to the riddle: it was obviously the Mystery Shack. Dipper had to search there for answers that would unveil how the minions of Bill Cipher would bring him back to the world. But where exactly and how could he possibly start this arduous quest? It was futile for him to think about the answers to these questions, for Bill said that his enemy had to be patient and wait for the results of his labour to reveal themselves to him.
Before Bill Cipher disappeared from his presence, however, he spoke with Dipper one last time "Oh, before I go back to the horrid Nothingness of the Void, let me do one last thing to you, so as to ensure you don't interfere with my minions' work, who are now taking care of things, and don't see anything important too soon…"
Unfortunately, Dipper realized Bill had deceived him once more. Bill's last words were only a distraction to stall up Dipper and gain some time to unleash a malevolent trap: the demon created a personal special cage to trap Dipper inside of its confined space! But the worst part of this contraption is the fact that the cage's construction material is constituted by remains of various limbs of the human body: spanning from severed legs to sticky human intestines still dripping flesh blood, and beyond….
Naturally, Dipper entered into a state of a frenzied panic he had never felt before in his entire life and started reaching with his hands for the flesh bars that held him prisoner, with the intent to shake them. He didn't care if he was touching the rotting flesh of corpses, all he wanted was to get out of there alive "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT RIGHT NOW, YOU SICK SON OF A BITCH!"
"HAHAHAHA! No way am I going to release you right now! I control the functioning of this delightful cage. And as long as I do, you can never wake up in the hopes of leaving the Void as if it were your run-of-the-mill nightmare. No, I'm about to show you a small example that proves how wrong you and your gang have been all these years by thinking you defeated me during the first Weirdmaggedon. In fact, all you ever accomplished was to postpone the time of the destruction and of the conquering of the universe! Now, behold! As I reveal to you the results of the hard work of my loyal servants!"
The imagery seen by Dipper in the next moments was not to be taken lightly. Our protagonist saw a horror he felt he had seen before: before his eyes, an image of the man he had previously seen meeting up with Soos appeared in a series of flashing slideshows, but this time he was lying dead on the wooden planks that make up the floor of the Exhibit Room!
And, as the flashing of this imagery was being repeated successively and faster each time it was shown, the horrified Dipper heard the psychopathic laughter of Bill Cipher in the background, unsure if he was mocking the death of the man, his facial expressions, or both at the same time. It didn't matter at this point, but Dipper guessed it was the case of the third option.
When this morbid show of horrors ended, Bill's eye returned to stare Dipper's puny body trapped inside the cage, still amused at the little show he presented to his victim, as noticeable in his tone of voice "Hoho! I see I've managed to impress you, and quite a lot, to be honest. However, you haven't seen the last of these spectacular scenes of gore and violence. I have more attacks like this one to unleash upon mankind, and I've chosen you as my number one spectator to watch all of the chaos that will unfold! … Oh, unfortunately our time together is over, for now…. So, I'm afraid I'll have to let you go back to the world of the living. But mark my words, pine tree, I'll be waiting for you… And my return draws nearer every day…. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
In the midst of another access of maniacal laughter, Bill's eye flamed up and let itself be consumed by the blue flames he himself generated. Afterwards, the human cage dissolved back into the emptiness of the Void, with Dipper waking up from this living night terror.
He lifts up from the armchair drenched on his own seat, being most visible on his forehead. Dipper only hoped that the corpse of Soos' client was nothing more than a tasteless prank set up by Bill to torment any human that would cross his path "O-O-Okay… Calm down, Dipper…. It was only a bad dream… just a too realistic nightmare…. Maybe nothing bad happened inside the Shack and everyone in here is safe and sound…. Yeah… I shouldn't have fallen asleep in here, I better hit the bed up in the attic and get a proper rest before I continue my work."
Dipper kept walking very slowly, dragging his feet along the floor until he reached the bottom of the stairs leading to the upper floor. But he stopped himself before taking any further steps up when he looked discretely at the door to the Exhibit Room. Even though Dipper is known to be a rational young man, he still held his doubts about whether what he saw in his dream was real or not "Hmmm… It doesn't seem to make any sense whatsoever: my mind tells me that the dead body wasn't real, but on the other hand my curiosity makes want to check out the inside of the Exhibit Room to check what really happened. Which side should I choose to follow?"
It didn't take too long for Dipper to make his decision: he decided to follow his animalistic instincts of natural curiosity towards something unfamiliar to him and entered the room through the door.
Yet, as soon as he set foot inside the exhibits chamber, he immediately regretted his own choice: for inside the closed room, was indeed the mysterious man's body lying on the floor, and he was really dead! Furthermore, increasing Dipper's state of terror and fright, he observed that the room was currently in a state of a complete untidy mess: however, it wasn't a normal mess, the chaos installed in the space matched the one that would settle after a fight between two or more people. The walls had small dents in them, the furniture was marked by large scratches, the fake mystical creates left outside had been completely shredded, with limbs ripped out of them, and finally the floor had marks resembling cuts made by a very sharp weapon.
Dipper couldn't take any more of this horrific vision, his attention was directed specifically at the man lying stiffly and lifeless on the wooden board… While standing quietly, absorbing the shocking events, Dipper saw once again the scene of the man's corpse appear, disappear and reappear on his mind several times per minute. Dipper hadn't experienced a dream … he had experienced in second hand what had happened in real life after the moment Soos left the man alone in the room.
At last, unable to contend the turbulent sea of all the emotions related to absolute fear, Dipper let out a shout unlike any other one engraved in his memory: this scream defied the very resistance of the fabric of matter, being so loud and powerful to the point of almost tearing a rip in the air flowing in the atmosphere of this traumatizing situation…
What was Dipper going to do now?! Should he call Soos to make him see what had happened?! Should he call to the police on the phone, asking for help?! Should he cowardly lie down on the floor, curling up in a ball expecting this to be just another nightmare inside another nightmare?! All of these options were demolishing what little sanity was still left in Dipper's soul, he had no clue of what to do next….
To be continued…