A/N: Aaaaaaaargh!

It was a dreadful April, gentle readers, and May is off to an extremely clumsy start. It's taken an infuriatingly long time to get this chapter to my satisfaction, and I couldn't have done it without the input of you fine folks. Thank you one and all for providing advice in this trying time of crisis, irritation, and universal brouhaha.

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

Disclaimer: None of this stuff is mine.

Also, be warned: this chapter contains examples of elitism, sexism, and mild racial bigotry.

This chapter's soundtrack is I Know Who You Are by Tyler Bates.


Night had well and truly fallen on Atlantic Island Park; the last few shreds of daylight had long since retreated over the horizon, plunging the derelict amusement park into a darkness that should have been all but complete. But for some reason, all the lights were on: every single ride was a lurid neon beacon in the night, casting a sickening haze of red, green, gold, and purple across the overgrown grounds; the Ferris Wheel, the roller-coaster, the Octotron, sideshow alley, the bumper cars, all of them blazed hideously into the darkness – even though the park had been closed for more than three decades and shouldn't have had any power to speak of.

And through the hellish display, the Bogeyman strode triumphantly, silver-headed cane held high as he loped across the abandoned grounds, cackling merrily to himself. Behind him, Lorraine meekly followed with Dipper still held tightly in her arms, and no matter how desperately Dipper tried to struggle free, nothing could break her grip on him.

"I can already guess what you're thinking," the Bogeyman chortled. "After all, I've been watching you ever since you arrived in this dimension. You're thinking, 'But Mr Northwest, how did you end up like this? What could be worth so much that you'd be willing to sacrifice someone's life to get it?' Well, I'm glad you thought of asking, Dipper, because it's time we got everything out in the open. There shouldn't be any more secrets between us, especially now that you're my ticket to eternal glory."

Dipper grimaced. "In other words, you never read the Evil Overlord list and you're rounding off the day by monologuing at me. You know this is only going to make you easier to beat, right?"

Auldman Northwest's smile grew. "I don't know if you've noticed this or not, young man, but the odds are not in your favour at present: the Council forces are decimated, the Illuminati are oblivious, the Bees are preoccupied with Tokyo, your uncles are either stranded or abducted, your annoying bitch of a sister has dropped off the radar, I've got Lorraine on a leash, and you're all of about five years old. Tell me, little man, exactly who is going to be beating me now?"

He hated to admit it, but the monster had a semblance of a point. Still, Dipper wasn't going to give Auldmen the satisfaction of seeing him downhearted. "Someone will," he snarled, trying to sound more heroic than he felt. "I don't know who, but it'll happen sooner or later; you won't get away with… whatever you've been doing."

The Bogeyman laughed uproariously. "That sense of optimism! Even after everything Solomon Island's thrown at you, you're still trying to squeeze a few stubborn drops of hope from what's left of your life. Well, I think it's time you learned the true story, just so you understand how you should be feeling…"

They were going south, now, towards the distant shape of the Ferris Wheel on the pitch-black horizon.

"Once upon a time," Auldman began, "the Northwest family had everything. From the moment Nathaniel Northwest first forged our alliance with the great Bill Cipher, we had been blossoming from a family to an empire. In exchange for unearthing His physical form and honouring Him with blood offerings, Bill gave us secrets that made us wealthy beyond the dreams of Croesus – and promised that when He finally ascended beyond His earthly shell, we would join Him in godhood. For decades on end, we worked to make that plan a reality, performing rituals to restore His strength-"

"And then Gravity Falls burned," said Dipper.

"Exactly. And I was the only survivor, a half-dead boy trawled from the riverbanks by a fisherman and led far from Gravity Falls, taken in by his worthless family; I was barely old enough to hang onto a single memory of my own, and between psychological trauma, near-drowning, and smoke inhalation, the Northwest name was lost to me. If my real parents hadn't been diligent enough to start my training in the ways of my family, I might have forgotten that I was meant for better things."

Dipper, remembering the bell and how Pacifica had cringed at the mere sight of it, barely managed to suppress a shudder at the mention of 'training.'

"Yes, I might have even been content to live with those ratbitten plebs, if you can imagine such a thing. But I knew my true place in this world! I couldn't recall the birthright that had been stolen from me, but I understood that I could never be content with a filthy shack in the middle of nowhere; I had to strive for greatness!"

"That wasn't the only reason, though, was it?" said Dipper. "I've read your diary: you were scared in the beginning. Childhood fears and bedwetting – that was what that court-ordered psychiatrist said about you. That was what really drove you to leave home and make money: you just wanted to find something that could take away your fears!"

"And you, Dipper, are just trying to make up for being too near-sighted to realize that I was Nathaniel Winter all along. Now, do shut up; efforts to overcompensate are rarely attractive."

Dipper once again had to admit that Auldman had a bitter semblance of a point, but there was no denying the venom in the Bogeyman's voice now; Dipper had struck a nerve, if only for a moment. It was a very, very minor victory, but he'd take those where he could find them.

"With my ambitions," the Bogeyman continued, "I quickly ascended from the peasantry. I sought my fortune in oil, won it a thousand times over, parlayed my millions into real estate, and made myself into a titan of industry. Before long, I was secure in my achievements… or so I thought. Then came the heart attack, and I knew that I couldn't be satisfied with just being another rich man grasping for more money and power; rich men died every day and were forgotten, their names barely leaving a mark on the history books. I needed to be more. I needed to be-"

"Fearless?"

Auldman ignored him. "Eventually, I discovered the Illuminati, and I learned that magic was real: I could have the power I sought… but when I petitioned the Illuminati for tuition in the art of magic, they refused me. Said I didn't have the talent to be worth their while! Hah! Well, I would prove them wrong: I would succeed without their help and become the greatest magus the world had ever seen! You know well enough about the hunt for occult energy sources that followed… but eventually, my search led me to the ruins of Gravity Falls – and it was there, surrounded by the relics of my long-lost past, that I finally remembered! At last, I knew that I was Auldman Northwest!"

"So why didn't you try Bill Cipher back? Why bother with Atlantic Island Park in the first place once you realized that you were a Northwest?"

"Because there was nothing to bring back, Dipper: whatever had brought the fire to Gravity Falls had annihilated Bill Cipher entirely, body and soul. I searched the length and breadth of Roadkill County for some sign that our Almighty Patron still existed, finding nothing but broken relics and charred bones, and no matter how intently I listened – as my father had taught me to – I couldn't hear His whispers. Bill was gone forever, and even if some meagre scrap of His being left out there, it couldn't grant me the godhood that was promised. It was there that I realized that I couldn't afford to wait for a bargain to be fulfilled, nor could I achieve what I wanted through handouts; if there was true power in this world, I would not ask for it – I would take it."

Dipper rolled his eyes. In other words, you knew that Bill couldn't protect you from the monsters under your bed, so you decided to become one yourself.

Out loud, he said nothing; hopefully, if the Bogeyman went on talking long enough, he might just let slip something important. However, he had to wonder at how long the old man could ramble on for: as far as he'd been able to tell from the outside, Atlantic Island Park hadn't been all that big by amusement park standards, probably easy enough to cross at a decent stroll in less than five minutes. But now, the distance between rides seemed to warp and distend around them, stretching out the paths between attractions, almost as if the park itself was deliberately extending itself just so the Bogeyman would have more time to monologue before they reached their destination (wherever the hell that was).

"Finally, I came to Solomon Island," Auldman droned on. "By then, I already knew of the power residing beneath the soil, the fabled nexus of dark energies. It could make me the greatest magi history had ever seen, even make me immortal… but how could I obtain it when Archibald Henderson, one of the most powerful magi of the 20th century, had failed to properly harness it? Well, as it turned out, Henderson had made one elementary mistake: he knew that the process of drawing power from the nexus could be powered by excesses of human emotion, but he thought that fear and hate were the only emotions that he'd need, hence why he made himself so infamous across Solomon. I discovered that you could get nearly double the juice through positive emotions, most prominently joy and happiness."

"And that was why you built an amusement park?" said Dipper incredulously. "Just so you could siphon off people's joy?"

"Exactly. As a test, I had the siphons and harvesting machines set up first, ahead of the other rides, so I could observe how the process affected the construction workers building the park itself. The machines went to work almost immediately, though the yield was comparatively minor; my workers were not a very happy bunch… and as it turns out, people who don't have much joy to begin with react badly to being siphoned – hence why we suffered so many 'accidents' in those days. Workers suffered emotional meltdowns, sabotaged machinery, or just committed suicide… as was the case with one Donald Williams. Isn't that right, Lorraine?"

Lorraine let out a low, pained whimper, but said nothing.

"When the park finally opened," Auldman continued, "the guests provided me with all the fuel I would need to begin harnessing the power of the nexus and imbuing myself with it. At the time, I thought that the siphoning process would leave my happy parkgoers feeling merely unsettled, but alas, I gravely underestimated the level of neuroses at work: more sabotage, more murders, more suicides, and not just from our guests… and eventually, it led to the park being shut down. I retreated to the House of Horrors with as much food and drink as I could secure at short notice, determined to harness the nexus with the accumulated joy that I had already siphoned."

A thought struck Dipper out of the blue, and he voiced it almost without thinking: "What House of Horrors?" he demanded. "I've heard that mentioned before and I think I've seen it once or twice in Lorraine's memories, but I can't see it anywhere in the park."

The Bogeyman chortled malignantly. "That'd spoil the surprise, my friend. You'll learn soon enough: we're headed there right now, retracing the footsteps of the Innsmouth Academy kids that broke in one day and decided to explore the one attraction that all the other thrillseekers had been too scared to visit. Oh, I'd spent months down there by then, trying and failing to access the nexus; in spite of all the visitors the park had seen, I still didn't have the power I needed to begin the harvest – a thimbleful too few, a dollar short. But then I heard the voices upstairs; at first, I was afraid, thinking that I was going be robbed or killed by some gang of teenage hoodlums… but then I heard the sound of laughter – that wonderful sound of children laughing – and I knew my salvation had arrived. I waited until they stopped paying attention to the runt at the end; at the very moment they were about to leave, I stepped in with the chloroform, snatched him right out of their midst, then dragged him down into the basement and put him on a concrete slab.

"Oh, Dipper, there are few things on this Earth that can compare to the immense satisfaction you feel when you have a victim lying before you, paralysed and helpless. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the boy while I was carrying him downstairs, but the moment he was on the slab, I knew exactly what I had to do. It was so simple, really: all I needed was the essence of joy at its most basic – the laughter of a child, stripped of artifice and nuance. So, I tickled him. I tickled him until his lungs finally collapsed under the strain of laughing and he suffocated to death. In that moment, the nexus opened to me, the power beneath the soil flowing through every pipe and channel that had been dug in the crust of this wretched island, and exactly as planned, my machines infused me with that energy. Words cannot describe what happened to me next; I had thought I would simply become a magus of such power the world had never seen, and that part was true, but I hadn't imagined the transformation I would undergo as the power flooded my veins. Can you imagine it, Dipper – to go from being an old man to being a creature beyond age? From having only the remnants of a decaying fortune… to being able to do THIS?!"

Stretching out his mismatched arms, the Bogeyman suddenly crackled with magical energies, his spindly frame aglow with power. Less than twenty feet ahead of them, the air around the Ferris Wheel began to ripple as Auldman's magic flowed across it, until the fabric of reality itself simply split down the middle and parted like a curtain, forming a glowing portal. For a moment, Dipper thought that they were simply expected to walk through it, but instead, Auldman made a beckoning gesture with his one functional hand and sent the portal hurtling towards them, opening wide like the jaws of a whale to swallow them whole.

Next thing he knew, they were standing at the gates of a completely different Atlantic Island Park.

Back in the park that they'd just left, the spaces between rides had seemed mildly distended, but this new venue seemed to go on for miles on end: laid out before them was a colossal plot of land more than twice the size of Solomon Island, spanning dense forests, jagged-tipped mountains, and even a vast lake that glistened like oil under the full moon – a lake that didn't exist anywhere in Solomon Island, at least nowhere near the plot of land where the real park had been built. There had to be at least half a mile between each attraction, if not more, for the distant silhouette of the roller coaster and the glowing rings of the Ferris Wheel now looked to be on opposite sides of the compound instead of virtually next-door.

What really got Dipper's attention wasn't the scale of the place, though, but the sheer gloom. The moon was only a perfunctory glow in the pitch-black sky, almost too feeble to cast any light in the all-consuming darkness, and the streetlights that should have been visible on the road behind them were nowhere to be seen, only impassable forests and tarry black shadows; indeed, Dipper got the distinct impression that there were no streetlights out there, nor was there any road. Wherever this version of Atlantic Island Park had been built, it stood along amidst the wilderness, the only sign of life on an island as deserted as the surface of the moon. Here, the only light that could be found was from the park itself, but here the garish neon of the rides seemed even more aggressive, the colours a thousand times more lurid, their very light painful to look at; as for the lamps that had been set up along the paths between rides, they seemed to illuminate only enough to make the darkness a distinct presence, casting a baleful glow on the path that only made the shadows between them even darker.

"Oh no," Lorraine sobbed. "Not again. Please, not again… no, no, no, this is a nightmare. In my heart and mind, I always return to Atlantic Island Park. I'll wake up soon."

Meanwhile, Auldman Northwest was chuckling triumphantly. "You like it? I made it myself!"

Dipper could only gibber. "I… what… how… where is this?"

"Beneath the Ferris Wheel and nowhere. This is own private universe, Dipper Pines, conjured from the void by the power of my will; this is the power I harnessed from the nexus – power beyond the wildest dreams of any human mage! This is Atlantic Park as it should have been: my masterpiece, my kingdom, my playground, my banqueting hall! And look…"

He pointed directly ahead of them. Less than two hundred yards away, a hideous face loomed out of the darkness, illuminated by the sickly glow of a dozen ghostly footlights; perhaps fifty feet tall, its eyes were clouded and sightless, its nose a crooked ruin, its gigantic mouth open wide in a ravenous gape. As Dipper's eyes adjusted to the darkness and the painful glare of the footlights, however, he realized that the face itself was just one of the attractions: within the carved mouth was the door to a house, barely visible behind the spectacle of the face and partly hidden by the shadows as it was.

"There it is," crowed Auldman. "The House of Horrors, plucked from reality and planted here in this private reality as the centrepiece of my kingdom. Best of all, nobody's even noticed it's gone: its presence here edits it from the collective memory of everyone on Solomon Island."

"But if that's true, then why haven't you done more with this power?" Dipper asked. "Why haven't you tried to take over the world or something like that?"

"I'll get to that in a minute. For now, let's continue onward."


For what seemed like hours, they shambled onwards towards the gaping maw of the House of Horrors, the path silent except for the faint moan of the wind, the rustling of the grass, and the Bogeyman's endless monologuing.

"Once I was finished, this pocket reality was where I settled once I realized the power that I had attained… but still, I wanted more; there was a hunger in me I didn't yet understand, a thirst for something beyond my comprehension. I didn't know what I had become or what I was supposed to eat, thought I needed the joy and happiness of others to feed upon; the next few meals – the few transients that snuck into the park in search of shelter – were deeply unsatisfying. I mean, have you ever tried to tickle laughter out of a homeless man? Christ, I thought I'd never be able to scrub off all the birdshit. For the longest time, I almost thought that I'd condemned myself to a virtual eternity of bland faire… but then one day, we received a different kind of visitor…"

Lorraine made a low, keening whine at the back of her throat, a sound so animal and desperate that Dipper hoped never to hear it ever again.

"That's right, Lorraine! You and little Callum, visiting us for the first time in years. And what a picture they made: Lorraine, drunk, depressed, coming off antidepressants, and almost fooling herself into thinking that the park was still open… and Callum, wanting nothing more than to get away from his miserable, neglectful mama. Well, as you can imagine, neither were suitable for siphoning: they barely had a grain of happiness to split between the two of them, and that grain was growing smaller everyday thanks to depression. I'd have been well within my rights to just kill them both and let the rats eat their corpses, but for once, I was curious; I wanted to see just how far the siphoning could go. So, I led Lorraine on a merry chase across my private universe, baiting her on with visions of Callum as my machines drained her of all positive emotions. If only you could have heard the things she said on her journey, Dipper; if you'd been able to unlock those memories she keeps repressed, you'd be witness to confessions that would have made your grey matter turn black!" The Bogeyman laughed, his gaping jaws lashing the air with viscous strings of drool as he did so. "And eventually… once I'd squeezed every last drop of entertainment I could get from her, I led her here, to the House of Horrors…"

By now, they were standing right under the maw of the House, scant inches from the front door. At a wave of Auldman's hand, the door swung open, taking a huge chunk of the surrounding wall along with it, resulting in an archway tall enough even for the Bogeyman himself to step through. Beyond, the interior was a derelict mess, no doubt partly disassembled after the park's closure and left to gather dust in the years that had followed: the doorways were curtained with cobwebs, the floorboards were peeling away, the wallpaper had flaked off like dead skin, the wind moaned through the broken windows like the cries of a damned soul, and the pop-up monsters were almost invisible beneath layers of dust and mould, and by now they were so misshapen by damp and neglect that they looked more like corpses than cardboard cut-outs. Right now, the House of Horrors looked more like a haunted house than it ever had as an amusement park attraction, but the Bogeyman stepped inside with the air of a man returning to his own luxury fallout shelter.

"I'm sure I don't need to tell you what happened next," he continued. "After all, you saw Lorraine after I was finished with her: none of that blood was hers, of course. But I learned some very important lessons that day, the most prominent of which was the food I thrive on: as a Bogeyman, I feast on emotion just as my machines do, but instead of joy, happiness, and all those other transitory flourishes, I feed on the darker emotions – despair and fear. In fact, I've been availing myself to quite a few morsels of your fear ever since you set foot in my territory, and it's been decidedly tasty. The other lessons… well, far better to show rather than tell."

There was a pause, as the three of them continued onwards through the derelict attraction.

"So you murdered Callum," said Dipper at last.

"Oh please, Dipper. You know as well as I do that Lorraine was the one who did the deed; you even suspected it yourself once or twice."

"Yeah, like I'm going to believe that after everything I've just seen you do to Lorraine! You made her kill him – you forced her to do it, just like you're forcing her to carry me around! And now you're trying to put it all on her-"

The Bogeyman laughed uproariously. "You still don't understand, do you? Even after experiencing the effects firsthand, you don't really get what this place does to the human brain: once your joy is drained away, other emotions begin to creep into the spotlight, and the victim begins to express notions that they wouldn't dare voice in public – or even consciously. You remember Lorraine's little rant about children, the one you heard inside her mind? That was about halfway through her voyage through my kingdom, and by then, my siphons had already drained away her false happiness, her nostalgia, her feeble attempts at motherhood, and even her efforts to hide her own resentment. By the time she finally arrived in the basement, I had made her more honest and forthright than she'd been in years, and after that, all I had to do was hand her an icepick. The rest was her decision."

"I don't believe you."

"You don't have to believe: all you have to do is understand that I don't control people, not really. I can baffle them with illusions, cripple their urge to run or resist, keep 'em on a leash until I get what I want out of them… but when it comes to the finale, I don't need to make them do anything they don't want to do, deep down. I just bring out their true selves, just I did with Lorraine, just like I did with you."

"Me?"

"Yes, Dipper, you. I saw inside your head while you were crawling around in that tunnel: you were being siphoned during that little adventure, and I saw all the emotions you keep buried deep down, all those feelings you do your best to hide – knowingly or otherwise. That hunger for glory, your desperate longing for Wendy and Pacifica, the self-loathing battened onto your ego like a lamprey, and all those petty hatreds you try so desperately to keep suppressed. I wonder, how would your uncles react if you knew that you resented them so deeply? How would Mabel react if you were to ever admit just how much you despise her?"

"I don't hate her!" Dipper shot back, a little more defensively than he'd have liked. "And I don't hate Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford either! I don't even think that way normally; that was just your machines messing with my head-"

"Oh, Dipper, Dipper, Dipper… can't you see the truth of the matter by now? My machines don't make people feel things; they only bring out what's already there, hidden beneath the brittle façade of joy. If the siphons made something grow in the soil of your brain, it's because you planted the seed there in the first place. What you felt down there in the tunnels wasn't mind control; that was you, Dipper – the real you, undiluted by happiness and freed from self-restraint. Deep down, you really do hate your sister, just as you hate your uncles, just as you hate yourself, because you secretly know just how much of a poisonous little brat you are. I mean, enacting Bill Cipher's prophesied apocalypse out of sheer thoughtlessness? Quite a sin to stain your soul."

"But I didn't!" Dipper screamed. "I didn't do anything! I didn't cause Weirdmageddon!"

"Your subconscious says otherwise. Your own memories are quite clear: you were the one who got the backpacks mixed up, you were the one who broke Mabel's heart, and you were the one who ran off into the wilderness. In the end, you've no way of knowing who was really to blame for that, so what if your deepest fears were right, and you really are at fault? What if everyone who was hurt or worse in Weirdmageddon only suffered because of you?"

Dipper opened his mouth to retort, but nothing came out. Maybe the siphons were still eating away at him, but it seemed like the longer Auldman Northwest went on speaking, the harder it was for Dipper to find a rejoinder – or even think of defending himself. All he could focus on was the familiar stab of guilt in the pit of his stomach and the Bogeyman's voice slowly drilling its way through his skull, into his brain. In desperation, he bit down as hard as he could on his lower lip, hoping that the pain could snap him out of whatever the old man was doing to him; to his immense relief, his head cleared ever-so-slightly, dispelling the self-loathing just enough for him to concentrate on the journey ahead.

I've just got to remember that it wasn't my fault, he told himself. I need to remember that whatever the Bogeyman accuses me or Lorraine of, it doesn't mean anything; we're still good people, no matter what he says.

"Then again," Auldman added cheerily, "It's not as if you were a paragon of virtue before the siphons went to work, was it?"

An unearthly silence followed, as Dipper tried valiantly to ignore the Bogeyman's voice. He tried to focus on the dilapidated attraction around them, on the bare concrete stairwell looming open ahead of them, on the hideous shadows cast upon the walls. But in the end, that grating voice won out over his focus.

"…what are you talking about?"

"Oh, I think you know well enough by now. I saw you playing around with Lorraine's head back in the treehouse, felt you worming around through her grey matter. You hadn't been invited inside her head; she didn't give you leave to plunder her memories for answers like some sunken galleon, and she definitely didn't permit you to spy on her most intimate moments like some peeping tom pervert. I half expected you to sneak a peek at the morning she lost her virginity, the way you were carrying on in there. I mean, you didn't even apologise."

"It was an emergency," said Dipper plaintively, as the three of them began descending the stairs. "I needed to know why she thought I was Callum-"

"And because you were hoping to find some way of switching her obsession off, I know. But was it really an emergency, Dipper? Did you really need to know, or was that just your curiosity talking? Again, you invaded her mind without permission, planned to bend her mind to your will, and spied on moments that had nothing to do with you simply to satisfy your need to snoop. Doesn't look like hero material to me, little man. And I haven't even mentioned all the lying you got up to. I mean, pretending to be Callum for as long as you did, playing Lorraine's emotions like a fiddle just to make her cooperate, lying again and again just so you could learn a little more…"

"Because she wouldn't listen to me!"

"Please, you tried exactly once and then gave up – because it was more advantageous to play along rather than to be honest. Before you ever started feeling the tiniest bit sorry for Lorraine, your first thought was – well, if we're being truthful, your first thought to dismiss her as insane and dangerous; your second thought was 'how can I bend this madwoman to my advantage?' So, you played at being Callum, tried to twist her emotions in the directions you needed, and deep down you blamed her for her delusions. But it's your pretensions to being Callum that really had me laughing, young man, because they proved to be the biggest advantage to my plans. You see, Dipper, you've been helping me all night without even knowing it!"

At last, the stairs ended, and the three of them stepped into the basement – a bare concrete room, undecorated and unfurnished except for a cheap plastic clock on the wall and a four-foot-tall concrete slab in the middle of the room.

At Auldman's command, Lorraine set Dipper down on the slab, then staggered off into the corner and stood there like a kid in time-out; immediately, Dipper tried to make a run for it, but no sooner had he even tried to rise from the slab the full force of Auldman's will hammered down on him and left him virtually paralysed on the concrete. He could move his right arm, but given that he had the muscles of a small child and no weapons in range, that was of no help whatsoever.

"You see," the Bogeyman plunged on, "the most valuable lesson I learned down here was of the value of despair. When dear Lorraine murdered Callum, I had my first feast of fear and horror, yes, but my machines also had their own miniature harvest: the despair she felt was so powerful that it unlocked a fresh surge of power from the nexus, enough to allow me to strengthen my hold over the park, enhance the power I could wield outside my private universe, and even bind the dead to my will. And at last, I realized the strongest emotion to fuel my machines: hatred is potent, but ultimately self-exhausting; joy is easy to provoke but can only power my machines in vast quantities; fear is too precious a food source to use as fuel; despair was the best of all. I experimented for many decades, trying to find the right dosage of despair that could infuse me with the full power of the nexus, but in the end, I realized that only a very specific kind of ritual sacrifice would be enough to finally empty the nexus and fill me with its power. All the pedestrian forms of despair were not enough; even suicidal levels of depression and misery were not enough. No, I would need the despair of someone who had failed at everything they had ever done, lost everyone they cared about, and had found a single instant of happiness before having it snatched away and suffering worse than ever before… and more to the point, I needed to pile more suffering on top of that. In short, I needed Lorraine back in my life. I needed her to re-enact the moment she lost hope."

By way of a response, Lorraine very slowly lowered herself to her knees and curled herself into a ball, whispering frantically under her breath as she did so. Dipper wasn't sure, but it sounded almost like she was muttering "wake up" to herself.

"As you can imagine, that proved to be a bit of a problem: after what happened her, Lorraine wasn't interested in returning to the island." Auldman chuckled. "And on the rare occasions when she did, she didn't go anywhere near Atlantic Island Park except in her deepest, darkest nightmares," he added. "But then the Fog came, bringing in so much upheaval and strife… and it wasn't long before Lorraine came limping back to Solomon Island on her usual self-destructive errands.

And then you arrived, Dipper. You looked just enough like Callum for me to make a small but vital adjustment to Lorraine's perception of reality, and you had no past in this universe that could possibly contradict the identity she had assigned you; you even had a touch of Weirdness to your soul, the better to help sweeten the process of siphoning. Best of all, you chose to lie; you didn't even try to change her mind, and so her belief in you grew stronger and stronger until it became practically unshakable. And once I had that on my side, remaking you to fit the part was so much easier: your body, your age, even your mind are all being reshaped even as we speak. Soon, you'll be so much like Callum that not even your own family will be able to tell the difference. You will be Callum in both mind and body… and at the very moment that the two of you match the template of the moment, the sacrifice of Lorraine's child will be repeated in every horrific detail."

Auldman's permanent grin widened. "This time, the nexus will be mine – not just a drop, or a sip, or a gulp, but all of it. I won't just be a monster, or the king of my own private world. This time, the world will belong to me."

"And all because you can't stand the idea of monsters under your bed," Dipper sneered.

"All because the world conspired against us," Auldman hissed, his spindly form suddenly alive with hate and bile. "Because my family was destroyed, and the people of this world forgot our magnificence. Worse, they forgot the example that we and so many others like us set. For nearly a century, I've watched as the proles of the world rose above their stations and the powerful permitted it – lions breaking bread with ants! Year after year, so many people who should have been happy to toe the line or cower in the shadows instead chose to flaunt themselves in the spotlight: if it wasn't the noveau riche, it was the suffragettes; if it wasn't the suffragettes, it was the unions; if it wasn't the unions, it was the coloureds! And after them million other stripes of upstarts and outcasts baying for rights that they hadn't earned! One by one, the lowly of the world seizing what we had made for ourselves, overturning the old bloodlines, eating away at the laws we had written, and still demanding more! And you know what I hated more than any of that lot, back when I was still called Nathaniel Winter and having to associate with those parvenues in public? Having to pretend they didn't bother me! Oh, there are so many disgusting things about being a public figure, believe me. But I'm free, now… and soon, they'll learn."

He let out a low, bubbling chuckle, like phlegm gurgling in the back of some hideous throat.

"Soon, I shall earn my ancient rights and reclaim what was stolen. Soon, there will be a world where the great will not be constrained by the small, where the lowly shall be grateful for being enslaved as they once were... and godhood will be attained by the one man who remembered that power belongs to those to whom power was promised."


A ringing silence followed this monologue. Eventually, Dipper managed to clear his throat and belatedly think of a rejoinder:

"And what'll happen if your sacrifice doesn't work, old man? I mean, what is this nexus anyway? Just some pocket of magic you tapped into by sheer good luck, really-"

By way of a reply, Auldman Northwest tapped his cane on the floor, and suddenly the room seemed to unfold in all directions; all around Dipper, walls, floors, and ceilings were detaching themselves from each other and floating apart like he was at the centre of an exploded diagram. Right then and there, he was no longer in the basement of the House of Horrors, but rocketing forwards through space as if someone had attached a jet engine to the slab, Lorraine and Auldman somehow whizzing alongside him like comets. Dipper tried to tell himself that it was probably just one of the Bogeyman's illusions, for he wouldn't want to risk his prize sacrifice on the real thing, but it was hard to convince himself of that with his stomach rapidly surging towards the back of his throat-

Then without warning, the slab juddered a stop in mid-air, suspending in mid-air above what looked like a vast cave. It was impossible to tell how far beneath the earth they were, or even if this was real or illusion, but Dipper could tell at once that no natural light should have been able to make it this far beneath the ground… and yet, somewhere up ahead, something was glowing in the darkness. Something drawing steadily closer and closer, until with another almighty lurch, it was right on top of them.

A huge, perfectly-even cube of some gleaming silvery metal, as reflective as a mirror and luminescing fainty in the darkness, its bulk shimmering faintly in the gloom. Perhaps it was a building, for it certainly looked big enough; or maybe it was a piece of machinery, for there was a faint rumbling throb from around it, almost as if there was some unimaginably powerful motor inside it. Whatever it was supposed to be, it was absolutely gargantuan. Dipper couldn't tell if the scale of this illusion was accurate, if it was supposed to be fifty feet tall or five hundred feet tall or five thousand feet tall – all he could tell was that it was big.

"Behold the Nexus," chortled Auldman.

"…what the hell is it?"

"This, young man, is a Gaia Engine. It's hidden directly under Solomon Island, right at the base of the mountain. You see, this is the energy source that so many men have come to the island to claim as their own over the centuries, all of them hoping to harness it and all of them being undone before they could achieve ultimate power. All of them tried to their dig their way in through brute force; only I was wise enough to build a pipeline directly to the Gaia Engine and reap a bountiful harvest of energy from a distance. Now, my domain is flooded with the power that keeps entire worlds spinning, and I can use it in almost any way I please… within limits. But in time, that will change."

"Gaia?" Dipper echoed. "As in the Immaculate Machine?"

"Exactly. This is one of the Engines that gives her power over the world… and gives her a world to govern in the first place: without devices like this, the world would never have been created in the first place. This is what the Host used to build our universe before they built their biomechanical deity to manage it… but can you possibly wonder what could have engineered a universe from nothing? Even for angels, it's a tough assignment. What could have given them the power to do so?"

Auldman tapped his cane again, and suddenly, the Gaia Engine in front of them was transparent – giving Dipper an uninterrupted view of its contents. Deep beneath the silvery walls, something writhed and spasmed in the darkness, flesh that was not flesh rippling like liquid, muscles that were not muscles flexing with unimaginable strength, arms that were not arms winding around the seemingly infinite bulk like ribbons around a Christmas present. He couldn't say if it looked like an octopus, because he knew with a certainty that frightened him that it wasn't an octopus no matter how much it looked like it, nor was it a squid or a whale or a shark, or any of the things it almost appeared to be. Every now and again, the shape within the cube would turn over on itself and would suddenly seem more like a spider – or a wolf, or a horse, or an elephant, or a human foetus; it seemed to have no set shape, and yet Dipper couldn't help but feel that it did, but he just couldn't see it clearly. Whatever this shape was, it was at once too dark and too bright to see the whole of, for light seemed to bleed away the moment it touched the thing's bulk, dissolving into stray motes that were immediately inhaled into the monster's shapeless maw – as if this thing could somehow eat light.

But at the very centre of the protean mass, haloed by curling limbs too solid to be real tentacles and too boneless to be real arms, there was one thing that Dipper could clearly recognize: an eyelid the size of a house, very firmly closed… and behind it, an eye that was rolling wildly back and forth in its socket, making the eyelid twitch ever-so-slightly.

Rapid eye movement.

Somehow, this indescribable nightmare was not only asleep, but dreaming.

Dipper looked away, dimly aware that his nose was now bleeding profusely and that he desperately needed to go to the bathroom. To his shame, he couldn't bring himself to look back; even though he knew that the thing inside the Engine was fast asleep, he couldn't bring himself to risk another ten-second glimpse at the monster, just in case that eye opened.

"Impressive," said Auldman. "Most people lose their minds at the sight of it; I've seen them piss themselves, dash their heads to pulp against the walls, gouge out their eyes, or just chew their wrists open. You've definitely made contact with the eldritch before, Dipper Pines; you're a more perfect victim than I could have possibly hoped for.

"But… but what is that thing?!"

"That, my young friend, is a Dreamer. A Sleeping One. A Whale-Mollusc God. A Sun-Eater. The Serpent Under The Mountain. This is the source of the Gaia Engine's power… and in it lies the ultimate irony of my family's quest. We laboured and toiled so dutifully in order to aid Bill Cipher's ascent to true godhood, when an entire race of true gods were buried all over the world in eldritch devices such as these."

"How did it get here, though? Why is it sleeping inside a Gaia Engine?"

"Because that's what the Engines were built for. At the dawn of time, Dreamers like this one were captured, imprisoned, and harnessed – all so that the Host could build their worlds. Billions upon billions of years and three Ages later, it remains here, keeping the world spinning. Ever since then, the Dreamers have wanted to escape their cages and feed freely upon the life-blood of stars, but so long as they remain asleep, they remains caged; you see, the Engine isn't just a prison, but a music box lulling it to sleep… but even in sleep, it still has power. You see that stuff leaking from the bottom?"

Dipper followed Auldman's pointing finger and saw that something was indeed oozing from the base of the Gaia Engine – a long, viscous stream of oily black goo pooling beneath the cube and flowing in all directions. Even from here, even in the dim light, there was no mistaking the tentacles that writhed atop the oil.

"That's the Filth," Dipper breathed.

"Highest marks. You see, you can cage a Dreamer, but you can't completely stop their reality-bending powers from working, otherwise you get nothing from them. The Filth is quite literally their dream – their fantasy of freedom. Since the beginning of this Age, they've been working their power upon reality in a desperate effort to escape, empowered to do so by weaknesses in the system… and through the same weakness, I have been able to siphon power from it time and again. Through that same weakness, I shall claim that power as my own – this time all of it!"

As if in response, the Dreamer at the heart of the Gaia Engine writhed in its sleep, its monolithic eye shifting wildly back and forth beneath the lid.

"Once the sacrifice is made," Auldman continued, "once I have infused myself with the infinite power of a Dreamer, reality itself will be nothing more than clay in my hands. I will have the ability to remake the world in my image, to populate it with people of my design, and annihilate anything that stands in my way; all who've obstructed my dreams in the past – the Illuminati, the Council, the unions – they will be annihilated, and I will be free to run my new world as I see fit. And that's over and done with, I'll move onto the next Gaia Engine in line – and the next after that, and the next after that, until nothing exists to challenge my reign over this universe. After that, the few peasants of the world who won't have been cowed into service by my power shall henceforth serve me for my generosity, for none but I could have saved them from the Dreamers."

He tapped his cane on the ground again, and suddenly the Gaia Engine was gone, as was the Dreamer; the basement was back in place around them.

"So now you know," Auldman concluded. "This is why greatness demands your sacrifice."

"And you've rambled for hours on end just so you can hammer in the despair that we'll both feel when the ritual begins, right?" said Dipper. "You don't think Lorraine can't hear any of this – that she won't try to fight what you're trying to do to her?"

The Bogeyman's grin now curled into a smug leer. "She hears exactly what I want her to hear, Dipper. Remember how I've been influencing her perceptions ever since the two of you met? And as for her resisting, what makes you think she has the will to resist? She's a weak, pathetic little tramp scraped off the tail-end of Maine, a whore in all but name. People like her are born to be nothing, born to do nothing but serve the desires of weak men and achieve minute sparks of happiness by finding themselves servicing the great. Deep down, she likes being my puppet. She knows that I only pull her strings in the directions she secretly wants. Why do you think she let you get this close to the park before self-defensive instincts kicked in? Why do you think she turned herself in instead of blaming me for what happened? I mean, just look at this…"

He crooked a finger in Lorraine's direction, and against her own will, she staggered to her feet and tottered over. Without a word, the Bogeyman drew back his one complete hand and delivered a open-palmed slap to Lorraine's undefended face, hard enough to send her tumbling backwards into the wall.

There was a pause, as Lorraine very slowly clambered to her feet, Dipper hoping against hope that this would be the moment when she finally rebelled. Instead, she only returned to her place in the corner, eyes to the ground, her face still completely dispirited.

"You see? Totally dead on the inside except for the desire to serve me! Ah, but I think I've given you enough explanations," Auldman sighed. "It's time to begin the dress rehearsals."

He leaned down, piggy little eyes surveying Dipper's supine body. "Clearly, you're not quite ready just yet: your body is almost identical to Callum's, but your identity hasn't yet been overwritten. I think you need a little extra time to cook. Perhaps some more siphoning would do the trick in this case – that and a change of clothes."

He turned, his obscene grin suddenly a thousand times more perverse. "And you, Lorraine! How I am supposed to make this ritual work if you insist on wearing that uniform? No need for those troublesome white threads, my dear; I've got your old clothes right here, taken right from the spot where the Council dumped them, now repaired, restored, and ready to be worn for the first time in thirty years. Come to daddy…"

Once again, Lorraine could only whimper a little as Auldman Northwest grabbed her by the scruff of her neck, drew a pair of scissors from his coat, and began slowly cutting Lorraine out of her uniform. Dipper looked away, hoping to preserve Lorraine's dignity, but that left him with the awful sound of the Bogeyman's mocking laughter ringing in his ears – and with his body effectively paralysed, there was nothing he could do to shut out the Northwest patriarch's leering commentary.

"The Bees have done wonders for you, Lorraine. You haven't aged a day since last we met… and look! No more broken blood vessels, no more malnutrition, no more piano-key ribs – you might even be able to pass for something with breeding! And your skin… so pretty… so pretty."

There was a choked sob, and Lorraine whispered, "Please stop."

"People are so sensitive about their bodies these days! Honestly, Lorraine, you act as if being seen naked is the worst thing that could ever happen to you when I've seen your personality stripped down to the last layer. Ah, but even that glorious day doesn't compare to our first meeting, my little honeybee. You remember? I was visiting the island to survey the place for the first time, and you were just a little girl with a bruise on your cheek, coming to apologise for her father not being there to escort me around the island. You were such a sweet guide that day, my sweetheart. I knew right then that I'd find a use for you someday… and you came through with flying colours! You're such a good little girl, Lorraine; Daddy loves you."

From somewhere amidst the rustling and snipping of clothes, Lorraine gagged, sounding as if she was minutes from throwing up.

"There! That wasn't so bad, was it? Back in your old clothes at last. I'll let you dress Callum – my treat."

Auldman darted back into view. "Now, I've got a few things to attend to before we can begin the ritual, so I'm going to have to leave you down here while I finish rendering down your identity. Don't worry, though: Lorraine will be here to make sure you don't get lonely, and in time, the two of you will forget all this unpleasantness until we're ready for the ceremony."

"You're not even going to try to post guards at the door in case we try to go anywhere? You're just going full Bond villain?"

The Bogeyman rolled his eyes. "Dipper, be honest: were you ever old enough to actually see any those movies? And more to the point, go where? This is my world: here, you play by my rules, and you dance to my tune. The only way you'll ever leave is with my permission. And that backup you're praying for will never enter because nobody has the power to open the way except for me, and nobody knows how to find this pocket reality except for me. Even the Bees that started nosing around after the Fog arrived never found me; I fobbed them off with one illusion after another and sent them stumbling home empty-handed – and they wonder why I keep reappearing even after they've 'killed' me! So, who do you think could possibly stop me now?"

"My family," said Dipper, trying to sound more confident than he felt. "As soon as they realize I'm here, they won't stop until they find me – and as for not being able to find the door to this world, it won't be the first impossible thing we've done! We've uncovered the secrets of Gravity Falls, we've built portals to other worlds, we've rebuilt portals to other worlds, we've done battle with giant gnome constructs and shapeshifters and aliens, we stopped Weirdmageddon and we've defeated Bill Cipher! Next to that, finding a secret door's going to be a piece of cake."

Again, that contemptuous roll of the eyes. "In a matter of hours, Dipper, your precious family aren't even going to remember that you exist."

"…what."

"That's the way this works, kid. Everyone sacrificed to my machines or fed to my appetites is edited out of human memory. I mean, why do you think that nobody ever investigated Callum's disappearance – or that of the Innsmouth Academy student I snatched, or any of the hundreds of children I've devoured over the last thirty years? I mean, can you even guess at how many kids have ended up on this slab over the decades? You'll have to guess – because I lost count fifteen years ago! Just imagine it, Dipper: all those empty photographs, all those birth certificates gone blank, all those bedrooms and nurseries that nobody could explain, all those little shoes that suddenly had never been owned, all those inexplicable sobbing fits in the middle of the night, all those delightful holes in the collective memory of this planet! None of them were remembered by anyone outside this park – except for Lorraine, and only because I made her a participant – and the only reason I remember those squealing brats at all is because I like stocking up on leftovers."

The Bogeyman leaned forward until he was practically nose to nose with Dipper, his hideous face alive with malicious delight. "And that's why I can't even say that you'll be a footnote in the history of my ascent, boy, because nobody will remember your name to enter it in a history book. You're just fuel – another lump of coal in the furnace – and the only person on the face of this planet who will mourn your loss is currently sitting in that corner. So, if you're hoping for some kind of familial closure in your final hours, I suggest you spend them with Lorraine; after all, soon you really will be her child – in every way that matters."

He smirked triumphantly through moray eel-like teeth. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a few last-minute issues to attend to; I'll be back in two shakes of a lamb's severed tail. In the meantime, the two of you can get to know each other better…"

He mockingly tipped his hat, spindly fingers dancing across the brim like spider legs. Then, he was gone, vanishing through the roof and back into the upper passageways of the House of Horror – leaving Dipper alone except for the now-silent Lorraine. Except, she wasn't so silent after all, because as the unearthly quiet began to blossom again, he became dimly aware that his unwilling guardian was muttering something under her breath:

"In my heart and mind, I always return to Atlantic Island Park. In my heart and mind, I always return to Atlantic Island Park. In my heart and mind, I always return to Atlantic Island Park. In my heart and mind, I always return to Atlantic Island Park. In my heart and mind, I always return to Atlantic Island Park. In my heart and mind, I always return to Atlantic Island Park…"


Amidst the heap of oversized clothes that Dipper was still wearing (barely), a tiny audio receiver was busily transmitting Auldman Northwest's words back across the ether. It had only just managed to hit the target, having been haphazardly fired at Dipper just as he'd dived into the tunnels leading into the park, but with the combination tracker/receiver now firmly affixed to Dipper's shirt, nothing could stop it from sending all the data it had just overheard to the relevant authorities.

Had anyone but the Illuminati built this device, the signal would have been lost in the void and wouldn't have been received by anyone… but Bob had been very thorough in his design of the tracking projectiles, and right now, a full audio recording of Bogeyman's gloating was being broadcast straight to the Labyrinth in Brooklyn.

And in the echoing chambers at the facility's innermost sanctum, the silence of Bob's domain was broken by the sound of the normally toneless voice of the Pyramidion muttering "OH SHIT."


A/N: Up next... care to guess?

Feel free to theorize!

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