As the last guest drove off from the parking lot of the Mystery Shack, Soos stood stoically on the porch, mysteriously staring off into the forest. Once the car's engine was sufficiently distant to his ears, he chuckled to himself and turned to go back inside. He had no idea if the departing guests had seen him perform this little dramatic scene. But he liked to imagine that if they had, the extra dedication to the Mr. Mystery bit made the experience all the more immersive.
Once back inside, he hung up the trademark fez and eye patch and began settling in. In stark contrast to the frozen forest outside, the residence side of the Mystery Shack was warm and inviting. The old glass light fixtures, looking suspiciously like a set one might have stolen from a bar, radiated a colorful glow over the room, while the cracked shiplap cast a yellow tint over everything in sight. Melody waved at the sound of Soos stomping snow from his boots, not looking up from her laptop on the couch. "Did you do the mysterious staring thing you wanted to try out?" she asked.
"I did!" replied Soos, wandering over to the couch to join her. "It felt like an authentic choice for my character."
"That's great, Soos," said Melody, turning to share an earnest grin. The Mystery Shack gave Soos a grand canvas to paint his imagination onto, and Melody actively encouraged his zany ideas. It had taken her some time to get used to living in her boyfriend's workplace, especially given that his grandmother had also moved in at the same time. But while Soos' imagination remained as childlike as ever, he had stepped up dramatically to be a responsible head of their multi-generational household and had gone out of his way to ensure everyone was comfortable and taken care of.
In fact, in order to accommodate Dipper and Mabel for the winter break, he had sent Abuelita on an all-expenses-paid Caribbean cruise, giving her a taste of luxury while also ensuring Melody didn't end up feeling crowded out of the house by their guests.
"You've done a great job so far," she added, "this place is way better than when I would come here as a kid."
"To be fair, Melody, Mr. Pines had a lot of unresolved emotional turmoil that kept him from reaching his full potential as Mr. Mystery," retorted Soos. His tone wasn't defensive, but Melody got the message - Soos wouldn't take a compliment at Stan's expense.
"Yeah, I guess you're right," replied Melody flatly, unconvinced. She tapped on her laptop for a moment, bringing up an unfinished social post for the Mystery Shack Snapagram page. "Anyway, I'm starting to get promotional material together for the Mystery Shack social media to hype up the party tonight, and I realized you and I never settled on a theme. We're past the major holidays at this point, it's too early for it to be a New Years' party, what do we call it?"
"Hmmm," pondered Soos. "I'm feeling… Winterween."
Melody frowned. "Really?"
"The town loves Halloween, the Mystery Shack is spooky, what's not to like? And more practically, it's the theme we already have all the decorations for."
"I mean, apart from it being pretty lazy on top of Halloween and Summerween, I guess I just don't see winter and Halloween going together all that well," explained Melody.
Soos chuckled. "The classic film A Skeleton Christmas Carol begs to differ. I don't know, maybe it needs a subtitle or something."
"A what?"
"You know, like in the title of a sequel to a popular movie. Something like, Winterween - Origins. Or maybe, get this, Winterween Forever."
Melody nodded, calmly accepting that she wasn't going to change Soos' mind, and began to add both Halloween and winter-themed adjectives to her promotional post. "Maybe keep workshopping that one," she replied with a cheeky smile.
With a goofy smile, Soos wrapped an arm around her and leaned in to watch her as she worked. His ideas were a bit silly at times, but her love of his unabashedly childish energy was as strong as ever.
In the eerie calm of the wine cellar laboratory, Dipper, Ford, and Wendy peered over Stan's shoulder as he scrolled down the feed of a group on Snapagram, ominously named Disciples of C. Image after image greeted them, all with similar vague slogans and adorations of the Herald of C.
But the most frightening part to Dipper wasn't the memes themselves, but the profile pictures next to them. Countless seemingly normal people he recognized from his summer in Gravity Falls were posting these images, followed by comment after comment expressing excitement and anticipation for the next message from the Herald. A wave of dread washed over him, realizing that the same fears of Bill's return that he was experiencing were generating a reaction this extreme from others around Gravity Falls.
"Have you found any posts discussing the Mystery Shack?" asked Ford anxiously.
"Sixer, I've barely found any of these goofy pictures that I can understand yet," grunted Stan. "For example, here's one that Bud Gleeful posted." Stan pulled up the post, which depictied an image of the globe in the place of Bill's eye. He squinted at the screen as he narrated the caption aloud. "'Follow the clues and you'll find the truth.' What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means nothing," replied Wendy derisively. "Clearly, someone started a joke online pretending to be this Herald and people who don't understand how the internet works just believed it at face value."
"What do you mean, how the internet works?" asked Ford. "It's a protocol of computers communicating with one another, how hard is that to understand?"
Wendy and Dipper looked at one another, and without a word, expressed their mutual apprehension and frustration at the idea of having to explain memes to the elderly Pines twins. While Ford was more than capable of coming to terms with the technology of the modern day after thirty years adrift in other dimensions, he was far slower at catching up with all things culture. Including, and especially, internet culture.
"Um," began Wendy, drawing out the sound as she struggled to find the words to describe what was happening. "When we started creating online communities, some people went into them to intentionally make people believe things that weren't true."
"But if you have all of human knowledge at your fingertips, wouldn't it be easy to sort out what is and isn't the truth?" Ford asked earnestly. Wendy sucked air in through her teeth, clearly pained by Ford's optimistic naivete. Dipper said nothing, but he felt confident he was communicating his mutual pain and secondhand embarrassment loud and clear through the dismayed look on his face.
"You'd think that, wouldn't you?" she replied. "But actually, despite it being stupid easy to look anything up, a lot of people believe the first thing they see and then refuse to ever change their minds afterwards." Ford scoffed in disbelief.
"I'm trying to sell these wine bottles like a legitimate businessman, and you're telling me all this time I could have been fleecing idiots over the internet?" exclaimed Stan, turning around from the laptop screen. "Why didn't either of you say something?"
"Stay focused, Stan," replied Dipper, pointing back to the screen. Stan grumbled to himself and returned to scrolling down the feed. "How many posts on here are actually from this Herald?"
"Not many," said Stan, squinting at the screen. "And they're all pretty much just copies of this one." He pointed to a social post on the screen. The only thing in the photograph was a picture of the woods with a text caption:
THE HERALD HUNGERS
THE RECKONING APROACHES
GREASY'S 2PM
"The Herald just posts about Greasy's?" asked Dipper, furrowing his brow. He had no context for what it could mean, but something about the word 'reckoning' gave Dipper an uneasy feeling.
"It looks like there's a post like this once every two weeks," Stan added, pointing at elements of the post for effect. "Never uses a drawing of Bill, an unrelated photo of somewhere in Gravity Falls. Occasionally there's a spelling mistake and the comments go nuts."
"What do you mean by 'the comments go nuts'?" asked Ford. Stan opened up the comments.
"Like here. In the post, apparently the word 'approaches' was missing one of the letters. Could have fooled me. But everyone in the comments is now guessing words that start with the letter 'P', thinking that they're onto some big clue being left for them by this Herald guy."
"I'm starting to wish I had added sociology to my collection of PhDs," breathed Ford, shaking his head. "None of this makes any sense."
"Frankly, that's not even the weirdest stuff I'm seeing in the comments," observed Stan, pointing a finger at the screen for emphasis. "These people are grasping in every direction. Almost every discussion on here has at least one person talking about something they saw in a dream. Wait, hang on..."
Stan stopped scrolling as a familiar face appeared on the screen. It was Stan himself, flashing a crazed grin in an image pulled from the televised debate for the Gravity Falls mayoral race. The caption on the screen read - ANYONE ELSE WISH THIS GUY WAS IN CHARGE? Members of the group had reacted with a constellation of positive emojis. Stan chuckled. "Can't argue with that one."
Ford shook his head. "Stanley, even you have to realize that having the support of a community like this is a bad thing, right?"
Dipper stared at the image of Stan on the screen, struggling to understand the connection the original poster was drawing between Stan and Bill. The implication of the image was obvious - if Stan hadn't been declared ineligible to hold public office due to his various crimes and indiscretions, according to the members of this group, he would have been a better town leader. But aside from them likely seeing themselves in a fellow conspiracy theorist, he didn't see any sort of reasoning for their support. "Stan, open the comments on that one, would you?" Dipper asked.
Stan complied and began to slowly scroll through the comments. A short sarcastic phrase popped up repeatedly - 'Never Mind This.' It was an obvious response to the post-Weirdmageddon 'Never Mind All That' law, and several comments complained explicitly that the law was preventing them from speaking freely about their dreams. A few specifically questioned whether Stan might secretly be the Herald, leading them from the shadows towards the light. The remaining comments commended Stan's abrasive personality, especially complimenting his ability to 'tell it like it is' and predicting that they would have already uncovered the truth if he was in charge.
"Horrifying to think about," muttered Ford. "Well, you know what they say, the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
"Has there been a lot of enforcement of the 'Never Mind All That' law since the summer?" Dipper asked, confused. "I've barely even thought about it until today."
"Not that I'm aware of," replied Ford, "but then again, I'm not running around trying to talk about Bill in polite society."
"What I'm gathering so far," began Wendy, narrowing her eyes in thought, "is that whoever created the Herald character doesn't really understand who or what Bill is, and neither do any of the Disciples. The Herald never uses Bill in their posts, and none of the memes that do feature Bill include any of his Nightmare Realm friends or ghouls that Bill conjured up during Weirdmageddeon. It's just pictures of Bill next to vaguely conspiratorial or political messages."
"That part checks out at least," replied Dipper, "very few people in town were around for the majority of Weirdmageddon. They were captured and turned into the throne of misery. They might remember Bill, but not who he was or what he was doing."
"And they're most likely associating him with this," Ford pulled a dollar bill out of his wallet, pointing to the rendering on the back of a pyramid with an eye at the peak. "The Eye of Providence, it's been a magnet for conspiracy theorists for decades. Imagine being the kind of person who suspects the government is controlled by a secret society of aliens, and out of nowhere you start having nightmares about this symbol dancing around, what would you do with that information?"
"Probably start filling up my apocalypse bunker with canned meat again," acknowledged Stan, nodding along with Ford's rationalization.
"I have to ask," began Wendy hopefully, "are we maybe overreacting here? There's clearly something weird going on, but it doesn't seem to rise to the level of like, a sinister magic cult trying to bring Bill Cipher back. The fact that they're correctly guessing that the Mystery Shack has a secret basement is concerning, but they really don't seem to know what they're talking about at all."
"That's a comforting theory Wendy, and frankly it's the only one we have to go off of without further evidence," replied Ford, shaking his head. "But I don't think we'll be that lucky. Unfortunately, even if we don't see direct evidence of anything sinister, three things stand out to me here as cause for alarm. Number one, the members of this group don't seem to know the name Bill Cipher, but whoever is behind this knew enough about him to call their group 'The Disciples of C.' That's too much of a coincidence for me."
"Two," he continued, "the members of this group are trying to connect imaginary dots with real consequences. Already, that's inadvertently led them to a correct assumption about the Mystery Shack, and they seem intent on proving it at some point. In a town with as much weirdness and secrecy as Gravity Falls, it's not a stretch to think that this won't be the last time they accidentally stumble across something else, like a hidden UFO or magical creature, that leads them further down a rabbit hole of conspiracy."
"Three, and most critically," he said with a dramatic pause, "we don't know who is behind this group, or for what purpose. But they've created a loyal following that has been primed to take orders, and the Herald seems laser-focused on bringing these people together in the real world. If we don't act fast, we won't find out why until it's already too late."
A knowing, terrified silence fell over the party.
"So what do we do?" asked Wendy after what felt like an eternity.
"Start with a list," replied Dipper. "Write down everyone in Gravity Falls who we know for sure would remember the details of Weirdmageddon. Then we need a second list of everyone who is a member of this group. Hopefully, we might be able to narrow down a list of who might be the Herald, and find a way to stop them before it's too late."
Ford nodded, and began wheeling over a whiteboard to use for the creation of the lists. Stan wasted no time in scrolling back to the top of the page, now ready to start reading off names.
Dipper, sensing a free moment, pulled the phone out of his pocket and opened the messages app. He had restored the connection to the internet, but despite his follow-up message to Pacifica…
MYSTERY TWINS HOTLINE: I'm so sorry, Pacifica. I took the picture without even thinking about where I was. That was really thoughtless.
...and the fact that the message had been marked as 'seen', he still hadn't received a response. A growing sense of anxiety gripped Dipper, and his mind began to race through potential contingency plans to salvage the situation.
"You alright, Dipper?" Wendy asked, noticing the look of regret plastered across his face. "You're not having second thoughts about the gold chain again, are you? Seriously dude, the only thing you need to be thinking about when you hand that over is if you've got some breath mints, if you catch my drift."
With no energy or desire to reopen that discussion, Dipper sighed and showed Wendy the text conversation between him and Pacifica. She took the phone from his hand, scrolled back and forth through the exchange for a moment, then handed it back to him.
"You don't need to beat yourself up over this. Good on you for apologizing, but she's probably off-break and too busy to reply."
"But I-"
"Ah ah ah!" interjected Wendy, "You two can talk it out later, we literally do not have time for you to be thinking about this right now. Ball's in her court, anything you add to this is only going to make things worse. Take a deep breath, put the phone away, and let's get back to work."
Dipper opened his mouth to speak, but Wendy's friendly smirk stopped him. She playfully punched his shoulder to further underline her point.
"I'm not gonna steer you wrong, dude," she added.
Dipper nodded and slid the phone back into his pocket. While the moment they were facing together was alarming, and he certainly regretted any hurt he accidentally inflicted on Pacifica, Dipper found a sense of calm in the realization that Wendy cared enough about him to reset his priorities when necessary. With a deep breath, he stepped over towards the whiteboard and began to jot down names as quickly as he could remember them.
With a fist bump and a rallying cry of "Tubular!", two beautiful beefcake teens drove their convertible into the sunset, and the end credits began to roll on Dream Boy High 2.
Mabel sighed contentedly, basking in the special feeling that one of her favorite comfort movies filled her with. And, to make things even better, she was surrounded by her best friends in the world, snacks, and pillows, all in a cozy basement den graciously set up for the group by Grenda's parents.
Turning her gaze from the TV to Grenda and Candy, she had expected them to express similar feelings of joy and satisfaction. 'Maybe,' she thought, 'they'll even thank me for sharing such a wonderful film with them for the first time!'
Instead, she was met with a loud, relieved sigh from Grenda. "FINALLY," she exclaimed, broadcasting her distaste for the film before Mabel could even ask for her thoughts.
"You mean you didn't like it?" asked Mabel, sounding shocked and a little hurt.
"MABEL, I LIKE HOT GUYS AS MUCH AS THE NEXT GIRL, BUT IT WAS THE SAME PLOT AS THE FIRST MOVIE ALL OVER AGAIN," explained Grenda, "IF YOU'RE GOING TO MAKE A SEQUEL TO SOMETHING, HAVE SOMETHING NEW TO SAY."
"I don't see the problem here," retorted Mabel, "I like the first movie, the sequel delivers more of what I like, why is that a bad thing?"
"IF XYLER AND CRAZ MAKE ALL THE SAME MISTAKES OVER AND OVER, WHERE'S THE CHARACTER GROWTH?"
"Why would you want them to change? They're perfect!"
"CHARACTER GROWTH IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS ABOUT THE ORIGINAL. IF XYLER AND CRAZ KEEP DOING THE SAME THINGS OVER AND OVER, THE FIRST MOVIE IS POINTLESS. IF YOU CAN'T THINK OF A NEW DIRECTION TO TAKE THE CHARACTERS, DON'T MAKE ANOTHER MOVIE." Grenda huffed and crossed her arms in frustration.
"Okay, but have you considered that they're just cartoons?" laughed Mabel, now amused by how angry Grenda was getting over an old movie. "Candy, what did you think?"
Candy didn't look up, instead choosing to stare intensely at the screen of a handheld gaming device she was preoccupied with. It became immediately clear that she had no strong opinions on the film whatsoever, and Mabel couldn't tell if her disinterest left her more disappointed or relieved. The small speakers on the handheld game blared a happy victory tune, and Candy sprung to her feet. "Yes! Go Candy! Go Candy!"
"Well if that one didn't do it for you," began Mabel, looking between Grenda and Candy with a smile, "what's up next on the 80s Movie Marathon-aganza?"
Shaking her head, Grenda slumped off the couch and onto the floor. "HOW ABOUT WE BREAK FROM THE MOVIES AND PRANK CALL BOYS?"
"Yes, that sounds like fun!" Candy agreed. She set down the handheld game and pulled her phone out of her sweater pocket, finding several notifications waiting for her. "Oh, Mabel, it looks like Dipper sent me a text for you."
Mabel laughed and crossed her eyes. "Hey Mabel, do you think Pacifica thinks sweaty hands are cute?" she joked in a dopey impression of Dipper's voice. "Nah, just kidding, we have fun. What does it say?"
"'Mabel,'" Candy read aloud, "'Seems like there's a weird cult of Bill Cipher worshippers on Snapagram. We're trying to figure out who's behind it. Want to join us? Also hi Candy, hope you're doing well.' Aw, that was nice of him."
For a moment, Mabel considered the offer. While occasionally they got on each other's nerves, Mabel and Dipper genuinely liked each other. And, more often than not, the Pines twins went out of their way to help the other out. While Mabel had always taken this for granted, she had learned through conversations with her Piedmont friends after the summer that her sibling experience was rarer then she previously assumed. Dipper reaching out, even on a mystery that Mabel felt confident he could handle on his own, was something to be grateful for.
But the moment of sibling gratitude passed. Shaking her head, Mabel replied, "Take a letter, Candy. 'Hey Dipper, you got this one, Broseph, gonna stay here with Grenda and Candy today. See you tonight!"
Candy tapped away on her phone for a moment, before turning back to her friends.
"Is 'Broseph' spelled with an F or a PH?"
Dipper aggressively massaged his temple, trying to think of anyone he might have missed. With no obvious motive behind the Disciples of C group yet, the going theory amongst the group was the one Wendy had offered - that the group had been created as a joke that got out of hand. Across the whiteboard, he and Ford had listed dozens upon dozens of names, assisted by Stan shouting out the names of townsfolk he found posting within the group, trying to divine out any notable suspects who could have created it.
But as far as they could recall, so far there were no matches between their list of people who would have remembered the events of Weirdmageddon, and those who were in the Disciples of C group.
"Are you sure that Robbie wouldn't be behind this?" Dipper asked Wendy, staring suspiciously at the list of the ten names under the subcategory of 'Zodiac Wheel.'
"That's where my money is," agreed Stan. "Creepy little monster."
"He is far and away the weakest link out of the Zodiac Wheel," mused Ford. Wendy frowned to herself for a moment before standing up in front of the whiteboard, holding out her hands to try and slow the accusations against Robbie.
"Do I take him for an internet troll? Yes, absolutely," acknowledged Wendy. "I could imagine him starting a group like this, but continuing to whip everyone up into a frenzy doesn't fit his MO. He just doesn't care that much."
"We also might need to take into account immediate family and friends of people on this list," added Ford, absently nibbling on the tip of the whiteboard marker. "In the same way we're talking about our experience with Bill now, others might have shared the full story with those closest to them."
"So that doesn't rule out Bud Gleeful," noted Stan with a dark chuckle. "Man, I hope it's him. I've been itching for an excuse to punch his dumb, smug face."
"It also leaves Preston Northwest under suspicion," added Wendy, crossing her arms.
"You really think Preston is sitting around in his ruin of a ski lodge making memes on social media?" snorted Dipper, raising an eyebrow mockingly.
"I don't know!" replied Wendy defensively. "He's got nothing better to do right now, and who's to say he's not doing all this to… I don't know, distract people as he drills for oil in the center of town or something? He's just as plausible as Robbie if you ask me."
Dipper took in a breath to raise another point in Preston's defense, but he held back as he realized Wendy wasn't really serious about Preston being behind the group - she was just upset that everyone was quick to gang up on Robbie without evidence. He silently resolved to let it go for now, at least until there was something more tying him to the Disciples group. Besides, he didn't want to waste his breath defending Preston Northwest of all people. "You're right, we really can't rule anyone like that out." With a small smile of acknowledgment to Dipper, Wendy sat back down in her chair.
"Maybe we're approaching this all wrong," Stan interjected, thoughtfully staring up at the list he had created on the whiteboard of group members. "Why would someone go to the trouble of creating an account calling themselves the "Herald of C" and then just join the group again using their real name? If they're trying to scam the people of the group, it's far safer to just use the fake name and keep their real identity out of it. It's what I would do."
Ford scoffed loudly. Despite largely letting bygones be bygones over their decades-long feud, Stanley assuming his identity over the past thirty years was clearly still a sore spot for him. Stan turned his attention from the whiteboard to Ford, aggressively rolling his eyes. "That's the joke, Stanford."
"Stan might be right," Dipper admitted. "There isn't a good reason to expect that the person behind this group joined with their personal profile." Ford sighed in frustration.
"That's unfortunate," said Ford, pulling off his glasses and cleaning them absently with his shirt. "because that leaves us with just one good way to find out more about the group"
"Which is?" asked Dipper. Ford said nothing at first, choosing to walk behind Stan to view the laptop screen over his shoulder.
"Stan, if you would, pull up one of the Herald's posts again." Stan obeyed, bringing up an image of the Gravity Falls water tower with the usual text caption:
THE HERALD HUNGERS
THE RECKONING APPROACHES
GREASY'S 2PM
"What day of the week was that posted?"
Stan peered in close to the laptop screen, lifting up his glasses to get a better near-vision look. "Friday."
"Was there one like it posted today?"
Scrolling up to the top of the page, as expected, Stan found another post from the Herald. This time the photo was the bus stop in the forest, with the exact same caption as before. Sensing where Ford was heading, Wendy quickly checked the clock on her phone's lock screen. "1:30. Cutting it a bit close, but we could make it. What's the plan, bust in and crack some skulls?"
"No, we have to be smart about this," answered Ford, stroking his chin. "The Herald only posts to advertise these meetups, so clearly offline interactions are just as important as online ones to this scheme. What we ought to do is send someone in who can ask the right sorts of questions without drawing the suspicion of the group, and the rest of the group can eavesdrop. We can't risk flying off the handle and making the Herald's fans suspicious of us."
"Well that rules me out," laughed Wendy.
"Thank you for your honesty," said Ford dryly. "Dipper, I suspect you'd draw too much suspicion trying to join, given that you're a known quantity in the realm of the weird and unnatural. And I'm far too much of a man of science to be a convincing convert of the Herald." Ford paused, as if reveling in his own description of himself. Dipper cringed slightly. "No, we need someone who trades in pseudoscience and fraud. Someone who, if they started posting conspiracy theories on social media, no one would be surprised. Someone jaded and, dare I say, sketchy."
Ford, Wendy, and Dipper all slowly turned to look towards Stan. In contrast, Stan stared forward, having zoned out while Ford was talking. A moment later he spun around, and realized that everyone else in the party was focused on him. "What? What are you looking at?"