A/N: We're back, and my record for interesting consecutive weeks continues in earnest :)

I had a whale of a time writing this story, in part because it distracted from the hurricane of issues we faced in this neck of the woods over the course of the last seven days; I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy.

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls, The Secret World, and The Park are not mine. I'm reasonably sure this has been established by now.

This chapter's soundtrack is Hobb's End by John Carpenter and Jim Lang.


The Old Man chuckled, spidery fingers clicking together in excitement.

They were close, now, so close. He'd given them all the incentive they could possibly need, and he'd given them no reason to suspect a thing.

All he had to do was wait for them to come to him and put their necks on the chopping block.

He couldn't wait to see the look on the brat's face...


"Mommy? Mommy, wake up!"

Lorraine groaned, forcing one eyelid open and immediately rewarding herself with a fresh jab of pain as daylight glared down on her undefended retinas. For a moment or two, she could only cringe, eyes squeezed shut and hands pressed to either temple as her skull began to thunder and buzz yet again: sleep had helped to smother the frenzied throbbing in her brain, but now that she was awake, the headache was back with a vengeance.

Of course, it had never really left her: it only seemed to leave, when the synapse-shredding broadcast from Agartha temporarily faded out of contact and the enraged protests of the Bee inside her finally fell silent. But if she was on her best behaviour, she found that the protests were far less frequent, the pain biting less viciously when it finally arrived; in fact, if she simply lay back and let Gaia chip away at her, she could avoid another headache for weeks, maybe even months on end. These days, it seemed the breaks between headaches were getting shorter and shorter so obviously she was doing something the Bees didn't approve of. Then again, they'd never approved of the that they'd been bonded, had been screaming inside her skull ever since she'd first woken up in the operating theatre to find herself being sewn up with that thing inside her chest, so who cared what they said anymore? Pain was pain, regardless of intent, and today, they seemed even worse than usual, even worse than they had in her dreams last night.

However, as she lay there, propped up in the lighthouse front door with the Buzzing galloping mercilessly across her brainpain and her eyes clenched shut so tightly that bright lights flickered behind her closed eyelids, she remembered that she'd awakened to the sound of a familiar voice. Prising open one eye, she belatedly recognized the tiny figure staring down at her.

How long have I been asleep?! Is it afternoon already!?

Suddenly wide awake, nerves crackling in panic, Lorraine practically catapulted herself upright with a yelp of surprise, her back stinging from leaning against the doorframe and her numb feet struggling to find purchase on the steps as she frantically took in Callum's anxious face.

"What's wrong?" she gasped, heart hammering. "Are you hurt? Did they try to sneak in? What happened?"

"It's okay, Mom, it's okay," Callum soothed. "We're all okay. It's just that…" A spasm of fear flitted across his pallid features. "I think I saw someone creeping up the cliffs just over there; I think it might have been Mr Pines."

Lorraine took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down. "It's okay, Little Duck," she said gently, patting him reassuringly on the shoulder. "They can't hurt us anymore – Mommy won't let them. Even if they do work out that we're staying here, they've got to cross a bridge to get reach, and once Mommy cuts through that, they'll be cut off."

"But what if they have helicopters, Mommy? They won't even have to cross the bridge: as soon as G- as soon as Mr Pines sees us, all he'll have to is call the others and they'll send in the chopper."

Lorraine's mind raced. Had there been a helicopter at the airport? It had been a while since she had gotten a good look at the forces that had been amassing north of Kingsmouth, but it was plausible that they had a chopper or two on standby.

But where could they go? By now, she'd just about exhausted their supply of safe hiding places: she'd only taken Callum here because she was out of ideas and desperately hoping that Krieg wouldn't shot them both on general principle. Now that this safehouse was dead in the water, where could they go next? The academy? Out of the question. The treehouse? No, the Council would still have an eye or two on that. What about one of the abandoned houses in Kingsmouth? Too risky with all the zombies, and besides, the Council might have that monitored as well. Or what about-

"Mommy?"

Too late, Lorraine realized she'd been voicing the last few seconds of internal monologue out loud. Clapping a hand to her mouth, she lapsed into a mortified silence and tried to focus; she needed to concentrate, needed to keep her composure from spiralling out of control, but with the headache tearing divots out of her grey matter, it was getting harder and harder to keep her thoughts flowing in the right direction.

"Maybe there's somewhere else for us to hide, Mommy," Callum suggested. "I think I saw some tiny houses downhill from Hope's End on the way over; maybe we can hide in one of them."

"I don't know, Callum; the bad men trying to find us will notice if Mommy has to break a window to get in…"

"They won't, Mommy; just make it look as if there was a fight. They'll think it was just because of a monster attack."

For a moment, Lorraine was lost for words. Could it actually work? She'd previously ignored the one or two houses lurking away in the coastal hills, either because they were surrounded by monsters, or because they were too close to Atlantic Island Park… but now it seemed they had no choice.

This might be safer than she thought; after all, Callum was a smart little boy – he'd always seen things she hadn't noticed until it was too late, had done his best to steer her in the right direction even though he didn't have the words to explain it to her. She'd made the mistake of not listening to him before, and it had almost cost her everything – would have cost her everything if she hadn't been miraculously reunited with Callum after all these years.

But how did it happen? she wondered to herself. That's the one thing I'm not clear on: how is Callum back after all these years? Is it something to do with the Bees, or the Filth? And didn't he look older when we found him?

No, don't question it! For Christ's sake, don't jinx this by trying to dissect the issue: you've finally got your first chance at real happiness in over thirty years – don't squander it now, not when you're so close…

She knelt down and hugged Callum tightly. "Mommy's so proud of you," she whispered.

But as Callum returned the hug, Lorraine couldn't help but notice just how much smaller he seemed now, how his oversized shirt hung off him like a poncho and his shorts were hanging on by a thread. She knew for a fact that he hadn't been like this when she'd found him at the Overlook; he'd been somewhere in the ballpark of about nine to twelve years old, but now he looked closer to five, closer to how he'd looked on that final night at the park. But why had he been older when they'd been reunited? Why had he gotten younger? Did it have something to do with her? And why had he been up at the Overlook Motel at the same time as Stan-

No, no, don't go there. Don't think about it. You know what happens when you doubt your good fortune: it starts to vanish. Don't question how lucky you are – just accept that you've been given a second chance.

Now get out there and make the most of it.


"Are you sure this will work?"

"I'm the All-Seeing Eye In The Sky, remember? Analysing security feed 88-to-100, Solomon Island, executive command initialized. If Lorraine and Dipper are anywhere on the island, I have the capacity to detect them. Like a boss."

"If you say so. So, do you have your agents planting cameras in everything, or microchip citizens at birth, or-"

"What gives you the impression that we need to, Ford? This is the twenty-first century: everyone on the planet is carrying a smartphone and will happily rattle on about their activities on social media no matter how incriminating. George Orwell was wrong, baby: Big Brother don't watch a thing – in this day and age, all he has to do is sit back and wait for people to send him their dickpics."

"Ewww."

"But on the other hand, we do implant our agents with tracking chips. And we do put cameras in some things. Requesting security feed 101-A-Solomon. For everything else, there's drones."

"What things?"

"First rule of hidden cameras is we do not talk about hidden cameras. Hmmm. It seems our target is attempting to avoid any visual feeds by avoiding more populated areas. Activating survey drones, deploying from Academy outpost."

"Bob, I can't actually see what you're doing. Could you provide me with a viewscreen or something so I can at least know where the drones are going?"

"If you insist. Popcorn and grief counselling now available with your movie at the concession stand."

"Jesus Christ, how can you make sense of all of this?! This monitor bank has a scroll bar! How many drones did you just deploy?"

"That'd be telling."

"Wait a minute… um, screen #201! I think we've got a confirmed sighting. Yes, that's Lorraine: someone should have probably told her that white uniforms tend to stand out against wilderness."

"I know, right? It's like nobody in Venice has ever seen Star Wars. Drone now within fifty feet and closing. Lock s-foils in attack position. How do you want to handle this: net launchers, tranquilizer darts, gas, harsh language?"

"If we were aiming for Lorraine, sure, but I don't think she'd willingly take Dipper anywhere near the park – not intentionally, anyway. No, if she's heading into serious danger, it's because Dipper's taken the Bogeyman's bait and he's taking her in a new direction; we need to get through to him, not her. Uh, does this drone have a speaker?"

"Yes, but it's not meant for serious broadcasting range. If you want Dipper to hear you, we'll have to get closer; you'll be given direct control of the drone for this session. Watch for enemy fighters."

"I gather this would be a lot easier if Lorraine carried a phone or used social media?"

"Shut up and get talking."


Not for the first time that day, Dipper had to wonder how long he'd been alternately dozing and searching for the cache, for as Lorraine sprinted down the road from the cliffs, he couldn't help noticing that the light was beginning to fade.

Maybe it was just some trick of the Fog, but it looked worryingly late in the afternoon and getting steadily closer to evening – as far as he could tell through the clouds blotting out the horizon. For a while, he toyed with the idea that time was passing quicker than usual, if only because it wouldn't have been the craziest thing that had happened on since he'd arrived in this dimension, but then he thought better of it; in hindsight, it was more likely that he'd simply lost track of the time while they were at the lighthouse.

It was almost unbelievable, when he thought about it: almost the entire day had been wasted while he'd dozed and hunted for Old Man Henderson's notes. But why had he been so tired? Was it just because he hadn't had a full night of real sleep, what with all the dreamscapering he'd done last night? Was it because of all the stress? Was his transformation into Callum putting a strain on his body?

Dipper could only hope it wouldn't last for much longer. With any luck, it'd be gone once Lorraine's mind was finally fixed, along with whatever was making him into a double of Callum.

The memory loss had better wear off as well, he thought. It hasn't gotten any worse in the last few hours, but it hasn't improved any either. If we waste too much time out here… well, let's not try to think too much about that. But how much further is it to the last cache?

Anxiously, he peered over Lorraine's shoulder, craning for a look at the road signs as they jogged past them. From the few he could see from here, they were currently rocketing between the crags and rocks studding the embankment just downhill from Hope's End, bound for Mason's Crescent; if Dipper remembered the map he'd seen on Utterson's screen, then Lorraine was probably planning to head east from this point to scout the area for empty houses – meaning that she'd have to head north onto Illumination Way, which was exactly where Dipper needed her to go in order to find the burrow where the spell cache was hidden.

Mason's Crescent passed in a blur of abandoned houses, all of them too visible to the Council and too close to Draug territory for Lorraine to even consider seeking shelter. Before long, Illumination Way shot by, leaving them in the shadow of a series of gigantic rock crags, beyond which lay Atlantic Island Park; even from here, Dipper could plainly see the shapes of the rides towering high above the crags, the winding roller-coaster tracks and the monolithic arch of the Ferris wheel standing out as black silhouettes in the faded orange sky.

But where was the burrow?

The notebook said that it was on the path east, but how far along the path would they have to go before they could find it? More to the point, how the heck was he supposed to recognize it, and how had Old Man Henderson disguised it? If it was with magic, he was out of luck… but as Lorraine continued jogging down the path, he couldn't help but notice the tall barbed-wire perimeter fence shrouding the crags, blocking any of the alleyways that might have allowed anyone to sneak inside the amusement park. If the burrow had ended up behind the fence, then someone had probably already found it and filled it in during the park's construction, and even if it hadn't been, there was no way he'd reach it; Lorraine had panicked at the very thought of using the park as a safehouse – she wasn't going to allow Dipper inside just to get at the burrow.

He was just about to reach for the notebook in his pocket for a doublecheck of Henderson's last journal entry, when there was a loud buzz from somewhere overhead, and a faint voice from above called out, "Dipper? Dipper, can you hear me?"

Lorraine skidded to a stop, frantically scanning the sky for the source of the noise. After several seconds of glancing back and forth, her eyes finally alighted on a tiny saucer shape hovering across the sky perhaps thirty feet away. To Dipper's eyes, it looked to be nothing more than an over-built blue frisbee cruising high overhead, except of course for the faint glimmer of an engine at its base and the white-painted triangle on its flank.

"It's a drone," Lorraine whispered. "Illuminati make, by the looks of things. They don't much care for the Council, not enough to send a drone after us at any rate."

"Does that mean we're safe?" Dipper whispered.

"Maybe. They might not be friends with the Council, but I don't trust them. Keep your head done, honey; there's no telling what they want…"

The drone zipped closer, and once again, the speakers at its sides issued a barely-audible call of, "Dipper? Can you hear me? Don't have her change course! I can tell what you're about to…"

The rest of the message was lost as the drone dropped out of earshot, but Dipper had already recognized Grunkle Ford's voice.

But how could this be? The last Dipper had heard, Ford was being abducted and carted off to Brooklyn, so how had he gotten hold of a drone? Had he managed to escape and hijack some equipment on the way out? Come to think of it, why hadn't he just showed up in person if it was so important? Was he still in enemy territory? And what was with that triangular symbol on its side?

And there was something else that was nagging at the back of Dipper's head: just before Lorraine had attacked the boats, Ford had mentioned something that had briefly caught Dipper's attention, but whatever it was had slipped his mind in the confusion that had followed. As far as he could recall, it had been something about hunting hounds, and for some reason, Dipper had been convinced that it was important at the time, but back in the present, he couldn't imagine why it had gotten his attention. Were there rabid dogs patrolling the coast at this time of day? Did the Council have hounds trained to sniff out Lorraine? Try as he might, Dipper couldn't remember what Ford had said and why it was so important.

The drone buzzed back into view, this time lowering itself to barely fifteen feet off the ground. "Dipper? It's me, Ford! You need to stop what you're doing, right now; I've got a good idea what you're doing and it's too dangerous to continue. Bob, I need you to stop this thing from roving around: I can't make myself heard if it keeps floating in the opposite direction."

"Safety measure," a cold, almost mechanical voice whispered. "Keeps the drone from being targeted. We can't stop here! This is zombie country!"

"Just for a minute or so, just for a minute-"

"Ford, if you can't retrieve your family, then you can't fulfill your obligations to me. I'm sure you don't need reminding as to what'll happen next. If you can't get Dipper, then you'd better be able to retrieve your brother. Hang on, why is your mike still on?"

As the argument between the two voices rumbled on in the background, the bottom very slowly dropped out of Dipper's stomach. He'd seen that worrying triangle shape on the side of the drone, and that had already sent a very subtle thrill of dread up his spine, but the last few whispers of conversation took all subtly out of the equation: Ford wasn't making this message voluntarily. Whoever'd kidnapped him was trying lure the rest of the Pines into a trap, and maybe Grunkle Ford was dragging his feet or trying to let Dipper know that something was wrong.

Dipper couldn't guess as to what the Illuminati wanted with the Pines family, but he had his suspicions about that distinctive triangle and the cold voice on the other end of the speaker. Whatever the case, it couldn't mean anything good for them…

…and as the drone drew closer, he couldn't help but notice the small gun turret on its underside. Was the plan to kill or tranquilize them right now? Either way, Dipper wasn't just going to wait for Grunkle Ford's captors to spring the trap. Heart hammering, he peered around the surrounding countryside, anxiously scanning the area for any other drones that might be sneaking up on them or any snipers that might be taking up position in the nearby bushes…

And then he saw it.

Less than twelve feet from their position, a tiny burrow had been dug in a tiny hillock just to the left of the path, just outside the fence, hidden amidst a mound of shrubbery. A little under two feet high, it was clearly not an animal burrow, for even from here, Dipper could see the distinctive shapes of wooden support struts holding the roof upright.

"We've gotta get out of here, Mommy," Dipper whispered.

"But they aren't after us-"

"They know that the Council's been after you by now, though, and if they figure out why the Council wants you, the Illuminati will want you too."

It was by far the shakiest lie Dipper had told yet, but it worked: Lorraine was no longer merely suspicious, but now actively nervous.

"Which way?" she whispered.

"There's a tunnel dug just ahead of us – see those shrubs? We hide in there until the drones have given up."

Lorraine drew back a hand already crackling with electricity and threw the ensuing bolt of lighting at the drone, instantly blasting it out of the sky. As the ruined drone crashed to the grass in a heap of semi-molten plastics, there was another buzz of engines in the distance – a sure sign that other drones were already moving in to replace it; Lorraine didn't wait for the reinforcements though: taking to her heels, she flung herself down the path, galloping towards the burrow at a speed that would have left smouldering tracks in the grass had she been moving just a tiny bit faster.

Not too far away, Dipper heard Grunkle Ford's horror-stricken voice: "Wait! Christ, what are the countermeasures on these goddamned things?! Dipper, I can tell you're giving orders for a change: don't head north, whatever you do, don't go north!"

A moment later, Lorraine dropped to one knee in mid-gallop and skidded into place right next to the burrow with an almighty crunch of gravel, and the next thing Dipper knew, she was pushing him forward into the safety of the burrow.

However, just the tunnel entrance neared, there was a muffled phut from somewhere overhead, and Dipper felt something hit him square in the left arm; for a moment, he was certain that he'd been shot, that he'd look down to find a tranquilizer dart in his back, but when he finally peered over his shoulder to take a look at the damage, he couldn't find anything. Whatever had hit him hadn't even penetrated his sleeve.

Then, pausing only to blast the offending drone out of the sky, Lorraine dived into the passage after him, pushing him away from the entrance and into the darkness of the passageway beyond.

In the pause that followed, Dipper looked around, awkwardly swivelling across the cramped passageway until he was facing the opposite end of the tunnel, which was currently shrouded in shadows as far as the eye could see.

"Mommy, do you have a flashlight?" he whispered.

There was a muffled commotion from behind him, and then Lorraine handed him a pocket flashlight no bigger than her index finger. "Not much good compared to a good old-fashioned ball of fire in the hand, but it's part of my uniform so I have to carry it around," she muttered absently. "I think we should be a bit careful about this, Little Duck; we don't know how this thing go– CALLUM, WAIT!"

Pausing only to switch on the flashlight, Dipper all but catapulted himself down the tunnel, crawling down the sloping passage into the darkness beyond before Lorraine could so much as reach for him. The torch didn't illuminate much, but it was just bright enough for him to see the tunnel stretching out ahead of him, and by now, Dipper was way past caring about what might lie in the shadows.

Somewhere in the warren up ahead was the answer to all their problems, the one thing that could untie the knot in Lorraine's skull and undo whatever had happened to Dipper, and if Henderson's notes had been accurate, it might even be enough to shut down the other secret societies – so they wouldn't have to worry about the Illuminati or the Council once the clarity spell was used.

Some distance behind him, Lorraine made a grab for Dipper's leg, her gloved hands brushing his ankle for a split-second, but for once, her "son" was too fast for her. Skinny as she was, Lorraine wasn't used to crawling at speed, let alone through anything as cramped and narrow as this, and down here, Dipper had the advantage: his diminished height made crawling at speed through the burrow incredibly easy, while Lorraine had to duck whenever the roof dipped too low. Right here and now, there was no chance in hell of her ever catching up with him unless they were to hit a dead end.

Already, he could see the faint marks of signs carved in the support struts, showing him the way to the hidden treasure – to the clarity spell that would finally make everything right. And in spite of his pounding heart and aching knees, he couldn't help but laugh as he crawled onwards through the dark, laughing with all the manic energy of a real five-year-old.

"Catch me, Mommy!" he shrieked. "Catch me!"


"Well, that didn't go too well, did it? Son I am disappoint."

"As long as he doesn't go north, he'll be okay. He'll have to see that heading into the northbound tunnels is a bad idea. He'll have to."

"I think it's inevitable that he'll head north, Ford: you know what those tunnels were meant to do. Besides, your nephew is hungry for closure and answers, almost as much as you were. That place is a gingerbread house and was always meant to be. Could someone please turn down the bug zappers?"

"I still managed to get a tracker on him. Provided he doesn't try and remove it, we'll be able to find him wherever he goes."

"A tracker and an audio receiver. Useful for eavesdropping, but quite useless for tracking: we already know where he's going, Ford, and we're not following until it's absolutely essential that we do so. Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown."

"But why?!"

"One does not simply walk into Mordor. We have detailed notes on what that place has done to people in the past: just look at Chad the Chipmunk. That part of the map is a strict no-go zone to anyone but the Bees, and it'll take a little while to call our imbued agents back from Tokyo; in the meantime, we're not throwing away valuable operatives on a place that has that kind of effect on the human psyche."

"But surely we can do something-"

"Not until they're aboveground and it's clear that I have something to gain by taking such a risk with mortal troops. Out of cheese error, melon melon melon melon. Meanwhile, you have other family members to rescue, remember? Including, for example, the guy who actually has the memory you promised me. Am I being too subtle?"


"Callum, wait!"

By now, Dipper had all but deafened himself to Lorraine's plaintive cries. Frankly, he had more important things to focus on, not least of which was the need to follow the increasingly complicated directions through the maze.

They'd been crawling for nearly twenty minutes, and both of them were beginning to suffer for it. The last time he'd bothered to turn around to get a good look at his pursuer, Lorraine was covered in dirt and dust, her uniform was beginning to tear around the arms, and a few cuts were already beginning to show on her face. As for Dipper, his oversized clothes were filthy, his hands and elbows had been scraped raw, and his knees were probably leaving a trail of blood that you could follow by smell alone, but he felt better than ever.

If he put his mind to it, it was the sense of freedom that really intoxicated him, the liberating feeling of finally being out of Lorraine's arms and being independent again… but also the pride, the knowledge that he had discovered the truth by himself and he alone would get to set things right. He'd figured out a mystery that Grunkle Ford hadn't been able to solve, he was defeating an enemy that Grunkle Stan hadn't been able to outfight, and it was his determination that was triumphing when even Mabel had wanted to cut and run. It was Dipper Pines who was going to win the day, and nobody else would be able to take credit for it: they'd see that he'd been right, that he'd made the correct decisions, that he'd taken the chances that nobody else had dared to – and maybe, just maybe, that he'd been able to bring down the secret societies that had been ruling this world from behind the scenes. And when they got home, people would look at him differently: they would know that he wasn't just the silly kid who sneezed like a kitten, who had to be rescued by relatives and bystanders in the middle of his own moments of glory; they'd know he was a winner.

Wendy would know that he was winner. Pacifica would know he was a winner. And then, they would…

Dipper blinked, suddenly not sure why he was thinking this way. Why was he suddenly so concerned about being a winner? Wasn't it just enough to have succeeded in this little self-imposed mission? Why did he care so much about being validated all of a sudden, when he already had everything he wanted back in the world he knew? He'd already been validated in the eyes of Gravity Falls, and while it was nice to be seen as a hero, there were more important things. Grunkle Ford had taught him that.

Sighing, he forced himself to pay attention to the increasingly complicated signs on the walls ahead; he couldn't afford to get sidetracked by his own personal obsessions, not when he was so close to the end of the road.

Then again, it wouldn't have been the first time he'd been tripped up by his own desire for success on his own terms; he'd made plenty of mistakes that way, nearly screwed up everything because he'd thought so highly of his own opinion, because he didn't want to look weak or stupid, or because what he'd wanted had gotten in the way of what he needed. Hadn't he ended up making himself look weak and stupid anyway on those occasions? Hadn't he ruined so many things simply because he thought he had all the answers? Time and again, Mabel, Grunkle Stan, Grunkle Ford been depending on him to make the right choice, and he'd let them down; he'd failed them in so many ways that it hurt to think about. Why did Dipper think that he was some kind of a success story waiting to happen when, at heart, he was a failure? How-

Dipper groaned and shook himself. Why was he thinking like this? Had he just blundered into a gas pocket or something? Was there something fungal down here, something that was playing games with his mind? He paused, took a deep breath and sniffed the air, trying to work out if there were any unusual odours in range, but all he could smell was dirt, sweat, and his own blood.

Maybe weren't the tunnels themselves that were making him feel weird, but his own past experiences. Looking back, it seemed like some of the most embarrassing, humiliating, or just plain disastrous events of the summer had happened in dark tunnels: that time he'd tried to capture the severed head of Wax Larry King, he'd been lead on a merry chase through the Mystery Shack's ventilation shafts, ending up facedown at the bottom of a vent with a peanut butter sandwich glued to his head. And what about that visit to the Bunker? That had finished off his hopes of becoming Wendy's boyfriend. And then there was that visit to that buried UFO – that had screwed up his relationship with Mabel so badly that it had accidentally kicked off Weirdmageddon! No wonder tunnels made him feel uneasy…

Curious, Dipper looked up at the nearest sign on the wall: X TO NORTH, 20 FEET, it read. Assuming that the universal language of X marks the spot was still a thing in this dimension, then Dipper was just twenty feet from the cache! All he needed to do was scramble onwards for a little further, and he'd be home free.

Behind him, Lorraine was still scrambling clumsily onwards, and was now struggling to close the ten-feet gap between them. "Callum, you need to stop," she wheezed. "Just listen to Mommy for a minute, please…"

And despite his best efforts to ignore her, Dipper couldn't help but freeze in place: the panic and anger were gone from her voice, replaced by a distinct note of dread; no longer was she screaming and shouting – now she pleaded.

"I think I know where we're going, and it's not safe. Please, just come back to Mommy. Please…"

For a split-second, Dipper's identity turned in on itself: his mind, already gnawed on by anxiety, envy, self-doubt and a dozen other competing emotions, suddenly went blank, and for the briefest of instants, he really was Callum.

His own memories faded out, replaced by a childish procession of events from across Solomon Island – visits to Atlantic Island Park, being the odd kid out at the local daycares and kindergartens, dark nights at home with Mommy passed out on the couch, bright days at Carrie Killian's house with all the bumps and bruises simply magicked away, moments where Mommy wasn't drunk or crying and could actually be there for him, bigger kids with odd scars warning him away from the forests, monstrous figures with weirdly tuneful voices lurking in the pumpkin patch, fanged faces leering at him from behind the chain-link faces… And in that moment, he wanted to comply with Mommy's desperate pleading; he wanted to stop where he was and allow Mommy to carry him away, out of the oppressive, suffocating darkness and into the light while the sun was still in the sky.

Right then and there, he knew – with the kind of certainty that only very young children possessed – that this was a bad place, a place where monsters lurked in every shadow and around every corner, just waiting for him to hit a dead end so that they could finally pounce and feast. It was making him feel things he shouldn't be feeling, giving him bad thoughts – just like that shard of mirror in the story about the Snow Queen that Mommy had read to him last winter. Nothing good could possibly be found here in these tunnels, and if it did, it was only here to lure him onwards into the jaws of the monsters; Callum didn't know he'd ended up down here, for he couldn't remember the last few hours clearly enough to make any sense of them, but he knew he and Mommy needed to get out of here right now.

But then the moment passed, and Dipper was himself again… and he had no intention of stopping now, not when he was so close to unravelling this mystery. He didn't know if Lorraine really was influencing this transformation, or if she was doing it accidentally or deliberately, but he knew that it was being propelled along by her need to keep him by her side; more importantly, he knew that those pleas – no matter how desperate they sounded – were just her fear of reality given voice. Most importantly of all, though, he knew that it wasn't going to stop him anymore.

Once again, he felt that familiar stab of anger, but this time there was no pity for Lorraine to soften the blow, no sense of understanding and sympathy that could smother the growing rage. He was furious, now – furious that she'd taken him away from his family, that she'd somehow shrunk him down into a double of Callum, that she'd made him play along with her delusions, that she was brainwashing into becoming Callum even if it was only by accident, but most of all, furious that she'd been too stupid, too weak, too crazy to question any of it. In that moment, he wanted to hurt her, to hit her until she puked blood, to punch her until she couldn't stand up, to tell her that Callum was dead and that their happy reunion had been nothing more than her imagination. In fact, the only thing stopping him from confessing right now was the fact that she wouldn't believe him; better to use the clarity spell when he finally found it, so he could watch as the truth sank in and left her with nothing but despair.

Then again, it wasn't as if Lorraine was alone in deserving Dipper's hatred. There were so many people out there who'd hurt him and had never apologised, who thought they'd been forgiven just because they'd never felt the need to say sorry.

Grunkle Ford, the man who acted as if he knew everything, always patting Dipper on the head and showing him "the right way". Always condescending, always judging others without ever really understanding them, always acting as if he was flawless when he'd made worse mistakes than anyone Dipper had ever known, carrying on with a spring in his step and never apologising to all the people he'd unknowingly hurt – because that would mean acknowledging that he'd screwed up and that he wasn't the paragon he wanted so desperately to be. So secretive, so isolating, and so self-important, always trying to be the lone hero… yes, with Dipper the faithful sidekick who smiled and nodded and adored and never had any opinion worth more than Ford's.

And what about Grunkle Stan? A cantankerous old fart who kept almost as many secrets as Ford and kept people even further away than him; a miserable taskmaster who never gave a single thought to what Dipper liked or thought about, always picking on Dipper because he thought it would "toughen him up", always playing at being the tough guy and never sharing his real self with anyone – because that might reveal what a greedy, neglectful, selfish, hypocritical, mean-spirited coward he was. How many times had he judged Ford for tampering with the paranormal when he never made an effort to warn Dipper away from it? How many times had he thought he was keeping them safe by pretending that the supernatural wasn't real, while he'd been happy to get Dipper and Mabel involved in his own criminal schemes? And what had he been doing while Ford was risking his life in Weirdmageddon? Cowering in the Mystery Shack, basking in the glory of being the leader, planning to resort to cannibalism when the food finally ran out.

And Mabel, Stan's favourite, his parents' favourite, the "freaking saint," the girl who deserved everything and sacrificed nothing. Bill had been right about her: she'd never done anything for him, not unless she had to be forced into it; she probably would have let Bill destroy the journals and throw Dipper to his death if only the idiotic taco hadn't opened his mouth too wide. Over and over and over again, he'd worried for her, he'd worked for her, he'd sacrificed for her, and what did he get in return? Insults, mockery, abuse, theft of belongings, "pranks" that endangered his life, matchmaking that nearly got him killed, and not one word of an apology and not one word of thanks. Maybe if he was lucky, her conscience might nag at her for a while and give him a reprieve – and maybe even save his life if he was lucky. But more often than not, it was all about her: her pet projects, her boyfriends, her pets, her desires. And somehow, she expected them to be together forever, even though they had nothing in common, even though never had anything nice to say about his interests, even though she'd been spending less and less time with him ever since the portal had opened? Ford had been wrong about Mabel: she wasn't suffocating, she was poisonous!

But he'd show them.

He'd show all of them that they'd been wrong.

Ford would no longer be able to hog the spotlight, Stan's doubts and dismissals would be silenced forever, and Mabel would never steal another moment of happiness from him again. This victory would be his and his alone, and everyone who'd ever done their best to make his life a living hell would just have to sit back and take it – exactly like he'd had to take it from them so many times… starting with Lorraine.

Drawing back his foot, Dipper kicked out at Lorraine, propelling a cloud of dust and dirt headlong into her unprotected face. Then, as she coughed and spluttered and tried to clear the grit from her eyes, he flung himself onwards down the corridor, giggling with manic joy as he hurtled down the last remaining twenty feet of tunnel.

"Callum! CALLUM, PLEASE! YOU HAVE TO STOP; WE'RE HEADING INTO-"

Lorraine's screams dissolved into another spate of coughing, and the rest of her sentence was lost as Dipper rounded the final corner.

As he charged onwards, Dipper was dimly aware – through the haze of anger, hatred, envy, and Time Baby only knew what else was sloshing around inside his head at that moment – that he might have gotten a tad overheated in the moment. Why had he thought all those things about Ford and Stan and Mabel? He hadn't exactly been wrong about them, but why had he been so bitter about it? They had made amends for their mistakes, had suffered, and sorrowed, and done everything they could to set things right. Why had he forgotten that? And why had all that anger suddenly flooded his brain at this moment?

And why did it feel like this tunnel was leading him uphill?

But these thoughts were brief and easily forgotten – and as the final tunnel opened up in front of him, they passed him by entirely. All he could think about was finding that last cache and ending this nightmare once and for all.

Ahead lay a circular chamber more than six feet tall and five feet across – more than enough room to stand upright in; from the look and feel of them, the walls were too smooth to belong to a real cave, so Old Man Henderson must have built the whole thing underground to protect the cache. As Dipper stumbled to his feet, he saw at once that the stone floor of the chamber had been painted with a bright red X. Even better, the floor itself was made of loose flagstones – light and very easy to lift, even for a five-year-old.

Once again giggling with excitement, Dipper made a beeline for the flagstone right at the centre of the X and flipped it upright, ready to uncover yet another hidden alcove.

Instead, Dipper found himself staring down into nothing more than soil. Confused, he reached down and scraped some of the dirt back, hoping that there might be the lid of a hidden container buried under it, but found nothing. Lowering the flagstone, he tried again with the next one in line, only to be greeted with exactly the same results – even when he went so far as to burrow several inches into the dirt below it; the same went for the next flagstone along from that, and the next one after that. In a frenzy of near-panic, he unearthed roughly half the chamber, flipping over every single flagstone and checking the dirt beneath it for any sign of the cache, and finding absolutely nothing no matter how deep he delved.

By the end of his search, he was almost frantic: judging by the shouts from the tunnel behind him, Lorraine was getting close now, and if she caught up with him, he'd never get a second chance at finding the cache. But where was it? Was the X in the floor just a distraction to point treasure hunters in the wrong direction? Had the cache already been dug up and the tunnels left here as a cruel joke? Had he misread the signs on the wall? Was there some hidden clue he'd missed somewhere along the line?

In desperation, Dipper fished the notebook from his pocket, hoping that there might be some overlooked scrap of information that could make sense of this mess. However, when he reached the final page, he saw at once that the final entry was beginning to fade away as if it had never existed – or, Dipper realized with a thrill of horror, as if it had been an illusion all along.

The new final entry of the notebook was much shorter and simpler than the previous one: there was no mention of hidden caches or clarity spells, or indeed anything that could have helped Dipper or Lorraine. There was only disconnected scribblings, smudged and dotted with ancient tears.

Samantha is dead.

My last remaining daughter, murdered by the very constructs I built to protect her. I took the hearts of innocent people to make them, and they wanted revenge for it – just as I wanted revenge on the Indians, just as I wanted revenge on Jack, just as I wanted revenge on the world.

All of this has been for nothing.

Alone as I am, the razor all I have left. Dreamers take my soul and this wretched, wicked world.

Dipper very slowly sat down, struggling to process too many revelations at once: that Old Man Henderson had killed himself, that Old Man Henderson logically couldn't be the Bogeyman, that the cache had been a lie, and worst of all, that the page that had led him here was nothing but an illusion. But if that was the case, then why had there been tunnels leading to this place? Who had dug them?

As if in answering, something about the room seemed to fade before his eyes; and then the walls around him billowed suddenly, and for the first time since he entered, Dipper realized that the room he'd stepped into wasn't made of stone at all, but cloth.

The entire chamber was nothing more than a tent disguised with illusions and built right on top of the tunnel exit.

The X hadn't been marking the spot for buried treasure: it had been the bait for a trap.

And in that moment, something grabbed the tent by the hem and flung it aside, whipping the six-foot tent away as if it were nothing more than the cloth in a conjurer's trick, leaving Dipper standing defenceless in the cold air. At once, he realized why he'd thought that the tunnel was leading them uphill: the entire maze had been leading them back to the surface, getting him stuck on the trail of the wall signs until he was too excited to notice that they were heading northwards.

He was standing right in the middle of Atlantic Island Park, and though it was almost night, the abandoned park was light up as if it had never closed, every lamp and every light ablaze, every ride and attraction glittering like fire in the growing darkness – so Dipper had no trouble seeing who had flung the tent away.

Towering over him was a figure that couldn't have been mistaken for a human being even at a distance. At once, Dipper could see that he was very tall, almost impossibly thin, and dressed in the tattered remains of a magician's outfit, complete with a tailed coat and a top hat, which only added it his unusual height. If it hadn't been for the slight hunch to his shoulders and the crooked back, he would have been well over seven feet tall, and he was so skinny that his entire waist seemed no wider than a child's hand. Propped up on long, spindly, multijointed legs like some distorted parody of a stiltwalker and sporting a pair of skeletal arms that looked as if they could slip through the gaps in a chain-link fence, the apparition was made all the more unearthly by the fact that it had no left hand – only a long, snakelike finger protruding from the wrist like a tentacle. In this serpentine hand, it held a silver staff complete with a filigreed ball on one end, gesturing imperiously with it like a sorcerer in a fantasy film.

The face was a bloated mass of sickly greyish-white flesh, the chin lost in a swollen mass of goitres layering its throat like a fleshy beard, the piggy little eyes gleaming silver in the darkness under the brim of its hat, the nose little more than a skeletal crater. Worst of all was the mouth, a jagged gash of needle-like teeth, a vast red-and-grey trench that seemed to encompass most of the length and breadth of the monster's face; the teeth seemed so wide that that they almost seemed to be forcing his jaws apart, freezing the creature's face in a hideous, slavering grin. But as he took in Dipper's terrified face, the blackened lips shivered, and the monster really did smile – a smile that all but froze the blood in Dipper's veins.

"Dipper," said the Bogeyman, its voice deep and purring, like the bassoon in some long-neglected orchestra playing its lowest possible note. "So nice to finally meet you in person."


Immediately, Dipper turned to run, only for the Bogeyman's right hand to shoot out like a cobra and seize him by the arm, hoisting him him into the air.

"Now, now," he chortled, "No need to leave so soon, sweet child, not after I've been preparing for your arrival for so long. I've prepared something very special for you and your adoptive mother; it'd be a shame for you to ruin it now."

Below them, there was a loud crunch as Lorraine finally forced her way through the burrow entrance, tearing out a huge chunk of the ground in the process. "Callum," she panted, staggering to her feet. "Callum, where are you? It's not…"

There was a pause, as she noticed the figure towering over her. Her eyes widened with horror, her face contorting into a snarl of rage. "You!" she shrieked, her hands instantly ablaze with fire and lightning. "Let him go! LET HIM GO NOW OR I'LL-"

The Bogeyman raised his staff.

Suddenly, the words seemed to die in Lorraine's throat, the flames on her hands guttering and vanishing, the electricity fading out of sight. Then, she fell forward, collapsing onto her hands and knees.

"Ah, Lorraine," purred the Bogeyman. "So sweet of you to pay me a visit after all these years. Why don't you say hello? Be polite. Give your old friend a kiss."

Lorraine only whimpered a little and shook her head.

"Come on, child; it's been thirty years since last we spoke. Surely this reunion's worth a kiss or two. Come to daddy…"

As if on strings, Lorraine jerked upright and began a clumsy, halting walk towards the Bogeyman, stumbling like a zombie as the monster bent down until his face was level with hers. Then, looking for all the world like she was about to vomit, Lorraine planted a kiss on the Bogeyman's misshapen left cheek.

By way of a reply, the Bogeyman leaned forward, opened its mouth wide, and ran its glistening black tongue along Lorraine's face; for her part, Lorraine could only stand there and take it, white with terror as the sluglike tongue oozed up her cheek and across her eye; it wasn't until the monster was finished that she finally collapsed to the ground, retching in disgust.

The Bogeyman laughed like nails on a chalkboard. "So good to feel my fingers inside your puppet holes again, sweetie. Fits like a glove…"

Lorraine was crying now. "No no no no," she whispered, her voice on the edge of hysteria. "Please, not again."

"Now then," said the Bogeyman, "I've been watching you for quite a while by now, and I gather you've been gobbling up all the little breadcrumbs I left for you, Dipper. You probably thought I was Archibald Henderson, didn't you? No need to protect your dignity, sweet child: if you weren't fooled, then you wouldn't have followed the illusion this far, would you? No, you came close to my name. You came so very close – in fact, I'm pretty sure everyone figured out who I am ahead of you, including all those surplus relatives you brought along for the ride. It must hurt, knowing you're the last to get the joke."

Dipper hung his head in shame. He'd been tricked alright – by himself most of all: just like he had with the search for the Founder of Gravity Falls, just like with Grunkle Stan, just like with Project Mentem, he'd jumped to conclusions and made an idiot of himself. Once again ignored everyone who'd tried to dissuade him, he'd gotten paranoid about Grunkle Ford again, and this time, he'd dismissed a genuine attempt to keep him safe. If anything, this was even worse; at least on those occasions, he hadn't done anything out of hatred, or planned to rub his success in anyone's face. But why had he had those awful thoughts? Why had he been so angry in that moment?

"Awwww, don't cry. My illusions fool just about everyone; by now, they can work almost anywhere on the island, even inland if they're carried that far… but I'm betting what really put the hook in you was the park itself. Once you cross over into my territory, you just couldn't control your own emotions, could you? All those buried desires and subconscious frustrations bubbling to the surface… Nothing to be ashamed of, sweet child. It happens to everyone. Just ask Lorraine."

By now, Lorraine had curled into a ball and was shivering in blind panic, eyes hidden behind her knees.

"But if you're not Old Man Henderson," said Dipper, "then you must be-"

"Nathaniel Winter," said the Bogeyman, smugly. "Millionaire, mogul, theme park tycoon, Bogeyman, master of illusion, and soon, master of all reality. At your service."

Dipper's mind reeled. How could this be? How could Winter be the Bogeyman? His power of illusion cleared up a lot of mysteries – it certainly explained how he'd been able to fake his death all those years ago, and how he'd been able to fake the last entry in Old Man Henderson's notebook. Presumably, those entries in Winter's own diary that had mentioned Henderson "showing me the path to freedom" had been purely figurative. All this made logical sense except for one thing: there had been a witness that had clearly and distinctly heard the Bogeyman call himself "Old Man." There was no explanation that could make sense of it: maybe he'd been saying that to throw observers off the scent, but how would Winter have known anyone was listening? Maybe it was just a name he'd given himself – after all, Winter was quite old after all this time. His bio suggested he'd been born in the first years of the twentieth century, just a few years before…

…before…

For the second time in as many minutes, Dipper's mind lit up.

The Bees had tried to tell him many things, including the fact that there'd been a trap, but they'd also said that "Not all old men are the same."

"You've met his children in your world," they'd said, "but he cannot be appealed to. Some bonds cannot be so easily broken, and some blood will always be poisoned."

Suddenly, Dipper remembered what Ford had mentioned over the radio back on the boat, right before he'd been captured… and in a moment, everything made sense: the fact that Nathaniel Winter had been born on the West Coast, the fact that he'd been orphaned and adopted at an early age, the fact that he'd had weak lungs, the claim that he'd "been born for more than this," and most of all, that pilgrimage to Gravity Falls and the Bill Cipher tapestry he'd brought back.

Dipper had even noticed the family resemblance in the photo included with the newspaper clipping – the eyes, the grin, the jawline, the teeth – but up until now, he hadn't even considered that it could be possible.

At last, he understood: Danny, that long-vanished member of the League of Monster-Slayers, had been right and wrong at the same time. He'd heard correctly, but he hadn't been warned that not all old men were the same: the Bogeyman had called itself "Old Man," but it hadn't been a nickname at all – it had been the monster's real name!

"That wasn't your birth name, though, was it?" he said out loud.

"Beg pardon?"

"Nathaniel Winter isn't the name you were born with, was it? You were adopted, right?"

The Bogeyman's smile grew horrifically. "I'm pretty sure that cornered mice shouldn't squeak back, but what the hell, I'm in the mood for a game: what do you think my birth name was, young man? I warn you - this won't end like Rumpelstiltskin."

Dipper took a deep breath. There was only one answer that made sense:

"You're Auldman Northwest."

There was a pause, and then the Bogeyman's smile very slowly vanished, purulent lips sliding down over his gigantic teeth until the jagged tissue of his mouth had become a frown.

"You're a lot cleverer than anticipated," he grumbled. "I don't know if I like that in a sacrificial victim. Still, you fit the bill well enough by now, thanks in part to yours truly. Now, enough preliminaries: I think it's time we set the stage for more meaningful surprises."

"A sacrificial victim?" Dipper echoed.

"Of course! Why do you think I brought you all this way? I needed someone very special for the ritual, and you, sweet child, are just the ticket. Lorraine, dear, hold out your arms."

Without saying a word, Lorraine staggered to her feet and held out her arms, her eyes still glistening with tears. A moment later, the Bogeyman opened his fist and let Dipper plummet into Lorraine's outstretched arms.

"Now," said Auldman, his grin back and wider than ever. "Follow along close, sweet Lorraine. It's time we welcomed you and your little boy back to the House of Horrors. Don't lag behind, now; we've got a hot date with destiny. Come to daddy…"


A/N: By now, I'm pretty sure everyone knew that the Bogeyman was really Nathaniel Winter and nobody was actually fooled by the Old Man Henderson red herring.

With any luck, his true identity as Auldman was still a surprise despite my clumsy foreshadowing. In hindsight, it was inevitable, that - after taking some subconscious influence from Wandavision, I just had to feature an "Agatha All Along" moment.

Sadly, "Auldman All Along" just doesn't have the same ring to it :)

Anyway, up next: more reveals, more intrigue, more villainy, and more preparations for the final confrontation!

Feel free to furnish me with your theories and guesses as to what the next chapter holds... or have a go at the riddle:

Uork gsv Fmxlmjfvivw Hfm.
Gsv ortsg yfimh hl wzip zmw Urogsb.
Rg sfmtvih gl yv zdzpv, qfhg zh gsv Svinrg sfmtvih gl hgvzo rgh kldvi.
Gsvb xzmmlg hsziv.
Gsvb droo nzpv z tizevbziw lu gsv fmrevihv.