A/N: Aaaaaaargh.

It's been interesting, ladies and gents. Interesting in the proverbial sense, in which everything seems to be flooding, breaking down, or just plain vanishing when you need it the most. On top of all those issues, I just couldn't be satisfied with anything I wrote in this chapter - as is so often the case with connecting chapters: I kept having to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite until I was satisfied, and every single time, the sections were too long, the descriptions were too in-depth, or the events didn't work in context of what had already happened.

But in the end, all the frustration was worth it: it's here, at long last.

I would like to issue the most heartfelt of thank-yous to all my viewers, reviewers, favouriters, and followers: without you, there would be no story. Without you, there would be no me. With a tear in either eye, I salute you, salt of the earth.

We're creeping towards the end, my faithful droogies. I can only hope my work lives up to the strange and slightly ersatz equivalent of hype I've built up, and I hope that the quality is worthy of your praise.

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

Disclaimer: The Park, Gravity Falls, and the Secret World are still not mine.

This chapter's soundtrack is The Chosen Summoner by Nobuo Uematsu.


Mabel didn't recall entering the cave.

Her last clear memory was of her approaching the light and the warmth that blazed from within; the next thing she knew, she was floating aimlessly across the vast expanse of the cavern, enfolded in the warm glow of the golden light that shone from all angles.

She was dimly aware that her feet had long since left the ground and she was now floating through the cave like a bubble, but that didn't seem to matter; here, in the balmy warmth of the cavern, with the golden light gently pulsing down on her and the buzzing of bees droning all around her, it was very hard to worry about anything.

Besides, as far as she could see, there wasn't any ground here anyway.

Ahead, a colossal tree trunk thicker than any skyscraper that Mabel had ever seen stretched ever upwards and ever downwards: it was impossible to guess at how tall the tree itself was, because its roots were so far below her that the lower half of the tree appeared to vanish a few hundred miles below, while the upper branches stretched so high that they seemed to fade into the light. Along its massive limbs, Mabel could see tiny points of colour aglow across the rich red bark, and as she drifted closer, she realized that these miniscule dots were portals – each one showing a different location: a desert valley littered with ancient Egyptian ruins, a snowy mountain range with a gothic castle glaring down from the highest peak, a modern cityscape clustered with oily black creepers and glistening tarry bubbles… and in one of them, Mabel could see Atlantic Island Park.

Hours went by, Mabel drifting in and consciousness as the warmth washed over her like a hot bath. In between snoozes, she was dimly aware that the pain in her skin she'd felt since being flung from the boat was slowly receding, the many cuts and bruises she'd gathered in her voyage across the island sealing shut. Somehow, something or someone was healing her.

Then, from all around her, a voice spoke – no, many voices, hundreds or maybe even thousands of voices all speaking in perfect unison. It wasn't until Mabel noticed the funny buzzing tone to them that she realized that what she was hearing was bees, an impossibly vast hive of bees somehow speaking in coherent English.

"LO. HELL. HELLO?"

There was a pause, and then the Bees added, "MABEL PINES, CAN YOU HEAR US?"

"Hmmm," Mabel replied, grinning deliriously. In truth, she was having the time of her life: she hadn't seen anything this awesome since the time she'd nearly OD'd on Smile Dip. Maybe this place was like that; maybe all the golden light did funny things to your brain, and you just had to wait until it wore off.

"NORMALLY, DIRECT COMMUNICATION WAS/IS/WOULD HAVE BEEN MESSY; YOU WOULD BE INSANE OR DEAD UNDER NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES. BUT YOU HAVE BEEN TOUCHED BY THE ELDRITCH, AND THE CIPHER'S FINGERPRINTS STILL LINGER ON YOUR SOUL, SO YOU POSSESS JUST ENOUGH STRENGTH FOR US TO SPEAK DIRECTLY TO YOU… AND YOU MAY BE THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN ACT IN OUR STEAD. WE WILL NEED/NEEDED/NEED YOUR HELP, MABEL PINES. PLEASE LISTEN CAREFULLY: SPEAKING IN THIS WAY IS VERY DIFFICULT FOR US."

"I'm all ears," said Mabel. Wordplay and reality had frequently gotten mixed up when she was on Smile Dip, so if she really was just seeing and hearing things that weren't real, she was probably going to start sprouting ears all over her body now, or maybe her own ears were going to grow to the size of dinner plates; was she going to turn into an elephant? She hoped so.

"DIPPER IS IN DANGER. THE HERMIT HAS HIM."

Mabel blinked. Suddenly, the comforting warmth was gone, replaced by the kind of bone-deep chill you could only get by leaping barefoot from a heated building into a snowdrift. She was wide awake now.

"What did you just say?"

"YOUR BROTHER. HE IS-"

The light suddenly grew more intense, and Mabel felt a sharp pain in her skull as something was hastily transmitted directly inside it. In that moment, she knew that Dipper was hidden deep in Atlantic Island Park, but that there was a pocket dimension involved; she knew that Lorraine was being brainwashed and that she wouldn't be able to break free on her own; she knew that they'd been captured by Nathaniel Winter – who was also a secret member of the Northwests, somehow. Also, Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford were alive and headed for Atlantic Island Park to save Dipper at this very moment, but – with another flash of inexplicable insight – she had the distinct impression that it probably wasn't going to be enough. Gradually, the light faded… but unfortunately, not Mabel's headache.

"Okay," she said, head pounding. "I think I'm caught up on what's been happening. Ow. So… you're all bees, like the one living inside Lorraine… but are you real bees or some kind of computer speaking through bees? Do you have names, or are you just one big hive? Do you think you count as people? What should I call you? Bees? Bee-People?"

"MABEL…"

"I know – Beeple! I'll call you Beeple!"

"MABEL, IF WE COULD HAVE A MOMENT OF YOUR TIME, PLEASE?"

"Oh, right. First things first, what's this Winter guy planning on doing with Dipper? I mean, if you can basically email the details directly into my brain-"

"YOU ARE NOT ONE OF OUR CHOSEN, AND WE ARE PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT YOUR MIND CAN WITHSTAND," the newly christened Beeple explained. "WE HAVE GIVEN TOO MUCH BEFORE, GIFTED MORTALS WITH MORE INFORMATION THAN THEIR SKULLS COULD CARRY. THE RESULTS WERE… MESSY. WE CAN SEND ONLY THE SMALLEST DATA AT A TIME."

"Well, Dipper's life is at stake, isn't it? You need me to know this stuff if you want me to help, so get uploading!"

Once again, the light bloomed and Mabel let out a groan of pain as information poured itself into her brain: she knew about the Dreamers now, knew about what would happen if they awoke, knew what Nathaniel Winter/Auldman Northwest planned to do with them. More worryingly, she also knew that the Bees couldn't show her the way through Atlantic Island Park, for with Winter's powers expanding so quickly, the Bees found their vision blocked at every turn. The most they could do was to set her up with a guide – someone who'd been wandering the island long enough to know the layout of the park no matter how it changed, someone known simply as "Grey."

Finally, the upload came to an end; Mabel felt something inside her nose pop, and a heavy trickle of blood began oozing down her left nostril.

"THE GREY WASP WILL HELP YOU. THEY MAY NOT WANT TO, BUT THEY WILL. THEY DON'T WANT TO DIE ANY MORE THAN THE REST OF THE WORLD DOES."

"Okay… you've told me how I can get into the park, but what am I gonna do when I actually get there?"

"YOU MUST STOP WINTER."

"Thanks, I, uh… kinda got that."

"YOU MUST HELP DIPPER TO SHOW LORRAINE ANOTHER WAY; TEACH HER HOW TO LET GO. EASE HER PAIN."

"Well, that's nice and everything, but how am I supposed to do that?"

Mabel instinctively braced herself for the next headache, but to her surprise, it never arrived.

"YOU KNOW. YOU WILL KNOW. YOU HAVE ALWAYS KNOWN."

"…what."

"IT WILL MAKE SENSE WHEN YOU GET THERE," said the Beeple. "WE PROMISE," they added, slightly unnecessarily.

"Ooooookay. Um, I know this might be a bad time to start asking for favours, but is there anything you can do to help me? I mean, if something goes wrong, it's the end of the world, so I think I'm gonna need all the help I can get. I mean, if you're all just like the Bee that's giving Lorraine her powers; why don't you just…" Mabel took a deep breath; if this worked out, this was probably going to hurt worse than the upload. "…um, bond with me? I mean, being immortal and having magic powers up the wazoo would help a lot."

"NO."

"No?"

"WE CANNOT BESTOW GAIA'S GIFT ON LITERALLY ANYONE, NOR CAN WE DO SO LIGHTLY."

"Come on," sighed Mabel. "We're talking about the end of the world here! What about this sounds 'light' to you? You could recruit anyone on the planet to help out, so why not get down to it? I mean, it's either now or wait until the world looks like a snow-globe made of calamari! Urgh, I hate that I know that."

"TO BECOME ONE OF GAIA'S CHOSEN REQUIRES COMPATIBILITY. THE FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE IT ARE DIFFICULT TO TRANSLATE INTO HUMAN TERMS, BUT ONLY A HANDFUL OF INDIVIDUALS ARE RECEPTIVE TO OUR PRESENCE… HENCE WHY ONE OF US HAD BE FORCED INTO BONDING WITH LORRAINE."

"Oh."

"MORE IMPORTANTLY, BONDING WITH ONE OF US MEANS BECOMING ONE OF GAIA'S WHITE BLOOD CELLS… PERMANENTLY. A WHITE BLOOD CELL CANNOT ABANDON THE BODY IT DEFENDS. IF YOU WERE COMPATIBLE WITH ONE OF US – WHICH YOU ARE NOT – YOU WOULD BE FORCED TO REMAIN IN OUR DIMENSION; YOU WOULD NEVER SEE YOUR WORLD AGAIN, YOU WOULD NEVER SEE YOUR PARENTS AGAIN, AND YOUR BROTHER AND UNCLES WOULD BE FORCED TO GO HOME WITHOUT YOU. YOU WOULD BE LEFT ALONE IN A STRANGE WORLD. UNDER THOSE CIRCUMSTANCES, YOU MIGHT FIND THAT LORRAINE'S SHOES FIT YOU A LITTLE BETTER THAN EXPECTED."

Mabel opened her mouth to say that it wouldn't matter if Nathaniel Winter (or Auldman Northwest or the Bogeyman or whatever he was calling himself these days) ended up destroying the world… but then the prospect of never seeing her family again hit her like a slug in the guts. If it was possible to browbeat the Bees into this, could she really accept it? After all the fear and dread she'd experienced at the thought of being separated from Dipper, after all the terrible decisions she'd made, after all the shame and self-reproach she'd tried so hard to bury afterwards… well, she'd be losing everyone and everything she'd ever cared about: Dipper, Waddles, Grunkle Stan, Grunkle Ford, Soos, Wendy, Grenda, Candy, her parents… all gone forever, out of reach for the rest of her life… and if Lorraine's delayed aging was any evidence, that life could last for a very long time. If doing so meant saving the day, could Mabel just accept the fact that she'd never see any of her loved ones ever again? She didn't know, and as shameful as it was, she wasn't sure if she wanted to find out.

As if trying to reassure her, the Beeple added, "EVEN IF WE WOULD ACCEPT YOU FOR BONDING, IT WOULD DO YOU NO GOOD. IT WOULD TAKE TOO LONG TO COMPLETE THE PROCESS. YOUR POWERS WOULD REQUIRE DAYS TO HARNESS, AND WE ONLY HAVE HOURS."

Mabel sighed in relief and immediately felt guilty for it.

"BUT… WE CAN PROVIDE YOU WITH… AN ALTERNATIVE. A THIMBLEFUL OF POWER. UNDERSTAND WE CAN ONLY GIVE YOU THIS BECAUSE OF YOUR CONTACT WITH BILL. OTHERWISE, THIS GIFT WOULD DESTROY YOU. EVEN THIS WILL NOT LAST LONG. ONCE YOU HAVE EXHAUSTED THE THIMBLE, YOU CANNOT REPLENISH IT."

"Okay, I know I've probably said this before in this conversation, but what? A thimbleful of what? What power am I being given?"

"SOMETHING THAT CAN HELP YOU WITHSTAND THE DANGERS OF THE PARK. IT CAN BE USED TO DEACTIVATE THE WALKING DEAD… BUT AS LONG AS YOU CARRY IT, THE EMOTIONAL SIPHONING OF THE PARK CANNOT TOUCH YOU, SO USE IT WISELY. USE IT AS YOU WOULD USE THE POWER OF DREAMS."

"Oh. Right. Fair enough."

"THE FINAL INFORMATION DOWNLOAD WILL BE ATTACHED TO THIS TEMPORARY GIFT: YOU WILL NOT NEED TO KNOW THE CONTENTS IN THEIR ENTIRETY, BUT YOU WILL KNOW WHEN TO USE IT."

"Haaaaaang on. I think I kinda do need to know what's in it."

"EMMA WANTS HER TEDDY BEAR."

"What. Okay, I know I've said that a lot in the last couple of minutes, but… what."

"ALL WILL BECOME CLEAR WHEN THE TIME COMES TO USE IT," said the Beeple obliquely.

Mabel took a deep breath. "And when's that?"

"TIMELINES DIVERGE SHARPLY IN ALL DIRECTIONS. WE SEE TOO MANY. TOO MANY VARIABLES. IN SOME CASES, YOU USE THIS INFORMATION TOO EARLY AND IT IS USELESS. IN SOME CASES, YOU USE IT TOO LATE AND IT IS USELESS. IN SOME CASES, YOU SUCCEED AND THE WORLD IS SAVED, BUT ONLY BY WALKING ALONG THE RAZOR'S EDGE OF TOO SOON AND TOO LATE."

"Could you please just give me a rough idea of when I'm supposed to use this big important info packet you won't tell me about? Please? Pretty please with sugar on top and extra Mabel Juice on the side?"

"WHAT IS TIME TO US? WE STAND OUTSIDE. EVERYTHING HAS HAPPENED. EVERYTHING WILL HAPPEN. EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING… RIGHT NOW."

Suddenly, the light blossomed again, and Mabel felt the sharp pain of information being directly uploaded into her brain. This time, though, something else joined the dazzling influx of new data: the taste of honey fresh from the jar, rich and sweet.

"OUR WISDOM FLOWS SO SWEET. TASTE AND SEE."


When the light finally faded, Mabel opened her eyes to find herself back in the real world, sitting right outside the glowing cavern she'd just been floating through. To her immense relief, her clothes had dried, and her wounds had healed, so presumably whatever had happened back in the cave had been real after all.

Less pleasant was the fact that it was now night-time, and the only source of light anywhere in the dried-up riverbed.

How long was I in there?

And what info did the Beeple give me?

There was definitely another uploaded chunk of data sitting in the back of her mind, but unlike the others, it wasn't a mass of intrinsic knowledge meant to sit in the brain and be known: this was more like a memory, and more importantly, Mabel couldn't make head nor tail of it. It was simply too big to be processed in one go; there had to be at least ten years of information here, and with her mind still digesting all the details, she could only consciously access a few quick snippets of it… and even that couldn't be comprehended. Reviewing it in her mind was like watching the season finale of a TV show without seeing any of the previous episodes, and without context, it was impossible to make sense of anything in there. The Bees had mentioned "Emma wants her teddy bear," and there looked to be a few glimpses of an actual teddy bear towards the end of the memory, but it didn't explain who Emma was or why this information would be important to Lorraine.

And it definitely didn't explain how I'm meant to get to the park from here…

As Mabel looked around in confusion, trying to figure out where she was supposed to go next, a figure lurched out of the darkness to the south, and Mabel got within seconds of drawing her grappling hook and opening fire before she realized that the eerie-looking shape staggering up the riverbed towards her was not actually a zombie.

It was a girl about Mabel's age, short, skinny, pale, dressed in a ragged grey dress that looked to be at least eight sizes too big for her; perched atop her straggly grey locks was a battered grey Homburg hat that looked as if it would have fallen over her eyes if it hadn't been wadded up with old newspaper. Beneath the hat, her face was painfully gaunt, her face oddly disproportioned in a way that Mabel couldn't quite put her finger on; it wasn't an ugly face, but there was something very odd about it. To Mabel's eyes, there was something almost painful about that unsmiling face: the eyes were lifeless and apathetic, the mouth so downturned that it looked as if it had never smiled before – even the skin seemed grey and dead.

As the strange figure stumbled closer, Mabel got the strangest feeling that she'd seen her somewhere before: something in those pale grey eyes and those weirdly crooked features seemed to jog her memory, but no matter how hard she wracked her brain, she couldn't figure out where she might have met her. But while she wasn't certain if she'd met this stranger somewhere before, she knew who she was supposed to be. After all, there was only one person that could be meeting her here, in the middle of the night, in a zombie-infested wilderness… and the grey clothes were a bit of a giveaway.

"You're the Grey Wasp, right?" Mabel asked.

The girl's face contorted into a pained grimace, and she nodded.

"My name's-"

"I know." Her voice was low and raspy, as if she'd spent hours screaming herself hoarse. "The Bees told me everything."

"Um… do you have a real name? Only it's a gonna be a little weird calling you Grey Wasp all the time."

"Not anymore," the girl croaked. "Just Grey now."

She shuddered briefly and took a step back into the shadows on the periphery of the light. Once there, Mabel swore she saw Grey suddenly balloon in height, her silhouette suddenly warping out of proportion; just as quickly as it had arrived, the moment passed and Grey shrank back down to normal size, hobbling back into the light as if nothing had happened.

"Sorry," said Grey quietly. "Losing myself again. Or recovering myself. Or something. Doesn't happen often anymore. Might never happen again in a few days."

"…are you okay?"

The girl shook her head wretchedly. "Morphic exhaustion. Force a body that wasn't meant to change to do it every few minutes, it starts to wear out; eventually it can't change ever again. Lost too much of myself, not enough of the wasp inside to overtake me: trapped like this. New me. Couldn't stand it back in Kingsmouth. Ran away a few weeks ago. Been living rough ever since, up until the Bees started speaking to me."

"Out here, all by yourself? For weeks? How did you survive?"

"Know how to take care of myself. Plus," Grey added darkly, "some things are too rotten even for zombies to stomach. What about you, Mabel? You know how to use what the Bees gave you?"

Mabel thought for a moment. Then she realized that, even with the warmth of the cavern dwindling in the cold night air, she wasn't feeling cold in the slightest; somehow, she didn't just feel warm and cozy, but energized – as if she'd just taken a jumbo shot of Mabel Juice. Curious, she reached out, trying to draw on the power she'd been given as the Beeple had instructed her… and was immediately rewarded with a dazzling beam of light from her right hand.

"Nice," said Grey. "Best turn that off, though: you're going to have to save what they gave you for the final battle."

Once again focussing her willpower in much the same way as she had in the Mindscape, Mabel obediently willed the beam of light out of existence. As she did so, she felt the sense of warmth inside her very subtly ebb, as if she'd just siphoned off a tiny bit of gas from some invisible fuel tank.

Grey nodded grimly, lank tendrils of hair bobbing vaguely about her head as she did so. "Good. Now, we haven't got much time before this whole mess goes tits up, so we'd best be moving. I'd say we're heading into hell, but I'm no Virgil and you're sure as hell not Dante, so I can't say anything cool like 'abandon hope ye who enter here.'"

Mabel, of course, had no idea what Grey was talking about; the only time she'd heard anyone talk about Dante or Virgil was that one time after Weirdmageddon, when Grunkle Ford and Grunkle Stan had gotten very drunk and started regaling each other with stories about their worst adventures – Ford's being the visit to the Fifth Reality Of Eternal Torture, Stan's being Florida. Ford had rambled on about how the overseer of the Mighty Biodome was like Minos without the charm, Stan had told him about all the nightmarish people he'd met waiting in line at the DMV… it went on for a while like that.

"Okay," she said at last, "but who are we supposed to be then?"

Grey offered her a mirthless grin. "You're Frodo," she said. "I'm Gollum. Now saddle up: we're heading into Mordor."


Stan and Ford were dropped off less than twenty feet from the park entrance, practically flung out of the car and into the parking lot without so much as "by your leave."

Behind the ragged fence, the amusement park itself glowed balefully in the darkness, every neon tube and lightbulb lit up like a beacon, as if the place had never closed. Above it all, the Ferris Wheel stood, still turning, still glittering, still ready to lure unsuspecting visitors to their doom; frankly, Stan would have felt a whole lot better if it hadn't seemed as if he and Ford were being lured in.

By then, the two of them been hastily equipped with as much gear as they could be provided with at short notice, they'd been buffed with healing spells just to make sure they were in fighting shape, and Ford had managed to provide a very rapid summary of the situation. Right now, as they began the long slow march towards the open gates of Atlantic Island Park, they were as ready as they could be under the circumstances… a fact that only made Stan feel even worse.

"Okay," he said. "To sum up: Dipper and Lorraine are about to be sacrificed for ultimate power by a monster that was actually Nathaniel Winter but was actually a long-lost member of the Northwests all alone; they're hidden away in a pocket nightmare realm that'll drive us crazier the longer we stay there; and if the sacrifice goes ahead, chances are that Winter is gonna accidentally wake up some ancient devil-god-thing and blow up the universe. Have I got that right?"

"Pretty much," sighed Ford.

"If all that's true, then how are we going to make any difference? I mean, this Northwest-Winter guy was strong enough to turn out Lorraine's lights, then what are we supposed to do against him?"

Ford thought for a moment, leaving the parking lot silent except for the crunch of his boots on the gravel. "I think the first order of business is to sabotage his machines," he said at last. "That way, even if the worst comes to the worst and we can't stop the Bogeyman, the sacrifice won't work without the harvesting machines to draw power from the Gaia Engine. With no substitute Callum around to sacrifice, the whole thing will come undone, and he'll be forced to find another one."

"But that'll mean-"

"I know, I know. But it's just a contingency plan: if we die, the sabotage should at least be enough to delay Winter until the Illuminati agents return from Tokyo – and discourage the Pyramidion from nuking this island off the map. No offence meant, Bob."

"None taken."

"Fair enough," grumbled Stan. "But do we have any plans that don't involve us being killed in battle or sacrificed or whatever?"

"Well, I was thinking that if I can arrange for a distraction – several distractions, ideally – we might be able to lure Winter away from Dipper and Lorraine long enough for you to swoop in and rescue them."

"Wait, me? What are you going to be doing while I'm saving the day?"

"Sabotaging the machines."

"Hang on, Ford. I don't know how many movies you've seen out there in the multiverse, but I remember my trips to the drive-in well enough to know the old horror movies off by heart: splitting up never helps anyone, least of all the Beatles."

"We're not splitting up, Stanley, we're playing to our strengths: I know the most about magic and science, so as soon as we find those occult machines, I stay behind and do my best to put them out of commission. You're the best at being charming and enacting feats of derring-do, so as soon as the Bogeyman's been drawn away from the sacrificial altar, you sweep Lorraine off her feet; get through to her any way you can, then get her and Dipper out of there."

Stan huffed irritably. "Alright," he conceded. "I'd be lying if I said you didn't have a point… but question is, if I'm being the hero and if you're supposed to be throwing a wrench into the gears or whatever, who's supposed to be keeping Winter distracted?"

"Me," said the Pyramidion. "This drone might not be able to channel any of my power directly into the pocket dimension, but it can make enough noise to attract Winter's attention. Let's make some fucking noise. Hopefully, I can buy you enough time for you to escape with Lorraine and Dipper. If not… our words are backed with nuclear weapons."

"I got that, thanks. Okay, then… let's do this."

The last few feet of the journey were spent in silence, each of them hastily reviewing the small arsenal they'd brought with them. All three of them were equipped with commlinks in the event that they had to coordinate over long distances, and for safety's sake, the two organic members of the team were wearing a special layer of Illuminati-issue body armour under their clothes, supposedly strong enough to stand up to either a fireball or a shotgun blast… or so the Pyramidion claimed. Ford had armed himself with his blaster yet again, along with a small assortment of power packs, laser torches, portable anima manipulators, and other gadgets – some of them borrowed from the Illuminati, others gathered from his own improbably capacious pockets. Stan was still toting around Lorraine's spare collection of weaponry, including the grenade; he'd also collected several spare clips for the handgun, a pair of scissors, and a length of twine – just for safety's sake. Lastly, the Pyramidion tested the on-board weapons of his drone mouthpiece, checking and rechecking its tiny collection of firearms.

Then, at last, they stepped over the threshold and through the gates of Atlantic Island Park. Immediately, Stan felt the atmosphere change: it was as if he'd just plunged through the surface of a frozen lake – a freezing wave sweeping over him from all angles, a cold so brutal it burned. Stan fully expected to look down and find icicles forming on his fingertips, and the fact that it was already a cold night didn't help. And as he stepped deeper into the park, the cold only seemed to grow a thousand times worse: he swore he could feel it creeping up his spine and freezing the blood in his veins, though Ford would probably tell him this was impossible if he mentioned it aloud. And something else was happening as the cold grew worse, something stirring in the back of his mind…

"Ford?" he asked, unable to hide the nervous tremor in his voice.

"Yes, Stanley?"

"About that emotional siphoning thing… you're sure it won't be able to affect us?"

"Well, we've both been exposed to Bill Cipher's magic and the magic of the Zodiac, so that should give us some immunity to hostile mind magic. Plus, the metal plate in my head and the mind erasure you underwent should make it a little bit trickier for invasive psychic impulses to take hold in our minds. As long as we hurry, we should be able to make it there before the siphoning begins to seriously debilitate us."

"Oh. So long as this doohickie of yours works, then…"

"Relax: it's already giving us a very clear trail through all this time-space distortion to the highest concentration of supernatural energies. Once we get to the Ferris Wheel, we've got the perfect means of opening the door to Winter's realm."

"But what if we're not resistant at all? I mean, this is all just guesswork, isn't it? What if we start going as nutty as everyone else who visited the park?"

"We won't, I promise you: even if the siphoning does start to alter our thoughts, it won't be anywhere near as bad as what happened to Lorraine or even Chad the Chipmunk. According to my research, the worst-afflicted individuals were people with pre-existing traumas and unresolved personal issues: Steve Gardner was an alcoholic, a good deal of the visitors were subtly traumatized by life on this island, and we've already seen enough of Lorraine's personal history to know that her life was a nightmare even before she lost her son. You and I may have lived incredibly hard lives, undergone all kinds of traumas, but we've resolved these issues: we've faced our personal problems head-on and we've come to terms with everything that's happened to us… so, in all likelihood, the siphoning shouldn't warp us anywhere near as badly."

"And I'm technically not here at all," said the Pyramidion, smugly. "Making me totally immune. Mind tricks do not work on me, only money."

"Yeah, yeah, rub it in, you pointy bastard. So, what you're saying is that for all intensive purposes, we'll be okay."

"For all intents and purposes."

"What?"

"It's 'for all intents and purposes,' not all intensive purposes, Stanley."

"You know I hate it when you correct my grammar."

"Yes, Stanley, I… oh dear."

There was a pause, as the three of them slowly realized what had just happened.

Then, Stan groaned, hid his face in his hands, and muttered "We're screwed."


With the three of them busy worrying over their plan of attack, none of them noticed the white-uniformed figure scuttling after them, darting from car to car as he made his way across the derelict parking lot.

Everyone had forgotten about Colonel Utterson: with so much effort focussed on preparing the contain the burgeoning global crisis – on calling the Pentagon for a nuclear ICBM, evacuating all pertinent business concerns, and preparing excuses for the media – the field hospital had been left just short-staffed enough for the freshly-healed colonel to sneak out of the room, retrieve his equipment, and steal a bike.

Now, he crept after the retreating duo with all the stealth he could muster, Desert Eagle at the ready. He'd been waiting for more than thirty years to find the one occult advantage that could restore the Council of Venice to its rightful place, the one thing that could finally undo more than a century of shame and dishonour: their efforts to create their own Bee operatives had ended in failure, and Lorraine had disappointed him far too many times to be worth saving. Now, if what he'd overheard from the hospital staff was correct, one had been hiding under his nose in Atlantic Island Park all along… and it seemed that the yahoo he'd scraped off the road and his trenchcoated confederate had a guaranteed route to it.

No doubt everyone thought he'd failed. They believed his forces had been scattered to the winds, that he had nothing left to work with and no hope of succeeded. Well, he would show them: though most of his troops were struggling to fight their way through the undead across the island just to reach the rallying point, he still had one attack helicopter in reserve. And he had his will, something that he could rely on more than any army.

For now, Utterson would follow Stanley Pines and his brother; then, once he was certain that the prize was in reach, he'd dispose of both men and claim the power in the name of the Council. All those decades ago, he'd let himself be distracted by a false prize – a lazy Podunk bitch unworthy of the gifts he'd granted her – and let the greatest power in the world slip through his fingers.

He wasn't going to make the same mistake twice.

But as he set off after the retreating figures, Utterson was so focussed on his targets that he completely failed to notice that someone else was following him.


For his part, Nicholas Winter had no idea what the hell was going on.

Frankly, he wasn't even sure why he'd felt the need to follow this pack of weirdos all the way back to where he'd started this mess. He didn't care about the Pines brothers, he didn't care about the Illuminati, and he couldn't have given less than a damn about the Council. He didn't even care that there was an apocalypse on, as so many of the boys in blue had been muttering among themselves as he'd crept out of the hospital.

However, the was one thing that he was absolutely certain of: Atlantic Island Park was his problem. It was his inheritance, and as much as he hated it, the place was his to do with as he pleased. Yes, he'd come to this shithole of an island to sell it and finally get rid of Nathaniel's unwanted magnum opus, and in return, he'd been trapped here by the Fog. And yes, he'd gradually gotten more attached to the place in the months that had followed, as visitors to the park supposedly had, and in return, it had reduced him to a crazy, black-toothed vagrant living off whatever he could steal. But even after all the havoc his unwanted property had wreaked on his brain, it was still his property.

Right now, he wasn't sure of Atlantic Island Park was the best thing in his life or the worst thing, but it was undoubtedly the only thing he had left in this miserable world, and as long as his name was still on the deed to the place, it was still his problem.

And if someone was planning to make Atlantic Island Park the site of some epic showdown for the fate of the universe, then goddammit, it wasn't going to happen without the approval of the owner.

He was still thinking those words when the road ahead seized him by the ankles and dragged him all the way back to the entrance.


Of course, with so many of the intruders paying too much attention to the road ahead – or the people they were following – nobody noticed Mabel and Grey scuttling through the parking lot. And with so much distance between each of the pursuers, Mabel and Grey didn't notice any of them either; they simply charged onwards into the deepening shadows, leaping off the path and into the overgrown grass bordering the pathway.

According to Grey, going offroad was the easiest way to avoid the inevitable distortion of local space, for in the last few weeks, the Bogeyman had gotten into the habit of using his powers to plant a huge number of spatial distortions on the pathways between exhibits, throwing intruders off-balance and forcing them to retreat empty handed lest they end up trapped forever on a gravel path no more than three yards long. Apparently, Winter had suffered a few nasty run-ins with visiting Bees and had no intention of being bothered by them again until he'd finally gotten his hands on ultimate power. As such, for anyone except Nathaniel Winter himself, it was almost impossible to navigate the trapped pathways of Atlantic Island Park without the aid of highly-specialized equipment – or a guide.

"Explored this place a little," Grey explained. "Got lost one or twice, nearly starved to death. Learned the traps off by heart. You can use your little pot of Anima to undo them, but you need to keep that in reserve, so here I am."

"But what were you doing here in the first place?"

Grey shrugged. "Nowhere else to go, nothing better to do. Even made it partway into Winter's realm before I got scared and ran for it. Should know enough about the defences to get you to the House of Horrors, though…"

The two of them remained silent for the rest of the journey, but then, Grey hadn't been forthcoming with any explanation for how Mabel might have known her, so there wasn't much point in talking anyway. Besides, Mabel was already distracted by the tiny reservoir of glowing Anima the Bees had given her: even though she'd barely used any of it, it was already starting to very subtly empty as they continued deeper into the park. On the upside, it meant that the Beeples' gift was protecting her from the park's mind-mangling atmosphere, but on the downside, it also meant that they were now operating on a very strict time limit: if they couldn't find Dipper before the Anima reservoir ran out, they were as good as dead.

At last, the Ferris Wheel crept into view. However, the door to Winter's private realm was already open, as if someone had arrived ahead of them; of course, neither Mabel nor Grey had the time to figure out who the previous arrival might have been, so they simply dived into the waiting portal without so much as a backward glance.

Of course, if either of them had spared a glance over their shoulders, they might have noticed Nicholas Winter trundling along behind them at a stately half-mile an hour, swearing a blue streak as he struggled to escape the latest spatial distortion.


Final preparations for the ritual took a little longer than expected – much to Auldman's annoyance.

Though Dipper's mind had easily been lulled into a soporific haze that would prevent him from trying to escape or even thinking about doing so, it wasn't quite enough for his mind to fully accept his new identity, even when Auldman made him physically identical to Callum in every way. There was something inside the boy's brain that allowed Dipper to subconsciously resist: part of it was no doubt due to the brat's inborn stubbornness, but there was also a physiological element to it, something scarred and calcified that prevented the alterations to the identity from completely stabilizing.

No doubt this distortion of the brain was the only reason why Dipper had been able to recover from the siphoning as quickly as he had… but as long as that resistance remained intact, there'd be a tiny bit of Dipper still present inside the new persona, and as long as that was there, the boy wouldn't truly be Callum and the ritual wouldn't work.

So, Auldman gave up on being subtle.

Using a technique that he'd appropriated from some of his more computer-savvy victims (known to their minds as "have you tried turning it off and on again?"), he brute-forced the process, aging Dipper back to his normal self and then forcing him back into Callum's form just as swiftly. For ten minutes, the boy lay on the slab in a shapeshifting heap, ballooning upwards until he was old enough to fit in his clothes again, then abruptly deflating until he could almost fall out of them. And all the while, as the structure of his brain repeatedly shifted back and forth, the scar tissue gradually softened.

Then, Auldman sprung his masterstroke: he aged Dipper, warping his clothes along with him as he stretched out across the slab, until he was hurtling through his twenties and tall enough for his spindly legs to dangle over the edge. Dipper wasn't consciously aware of this transformation, but the tiny note of his original personality that remained could sense his body changing – and clearly enjoyed it. Even in sleep, Dipper grinned and chuckled sleepily to himself in his newly-matured baritone, no doubt dreaming of the happy life he had as a grown up.

A quick taste of his mind confirmed that Dipper was awash with images of the life he wanted: a richly-appointed office with a wall clustered with framed diplomas, awards, and photographs of his many strange and wonderful adventures across the world – and on the desk nearby, a set of family photographs, complete with a wedding portrait… though Dipper couldn't seem to make up his mind if he should be married to Wendy Corduroy or (here, Auldman nearly vomited) Pacifica Northwest. And as Dipper floated in contentment, his subconscious defences at their lowest, Auldman worked his magic on him once again, once again making him younger… but this time, instead of simply making him into Callum again, he took Dipper all the way back to the very beginning.

He'd been too gentle with this process; he'd tried too hard to simply renovate Dipper into the person he needed to be, to build over the pre-existing structure of the little runt's life. Far better to tear down what was there and build on the foundations.

It was nothing short of hilarious to watch the boy slowly dwindling back into infancy, to see those distinctive facial features soften and warp as the years slowly bled out of him, as his briefly-adult muscles deflated like punctured balloons, as his limbs withered away to scrawny ruins of their former selves, as his teeth withdrew into his gums, as his body swelled with baby fat, as his plump little body shrank down into his increasingly-bagging clothes. When Auldman was a child, he'd liked to keep candles burning until they melted down to the wick, so he could watch their familiar shapes sag and dissolve into a heap of faceless molten wax; sometimes, he'd also tried to lure moths to the flame and get them glued up in the puddles, just for the thrill of watching them writhe as they drowned in a cloying mass of hardening wax. Now, Dipper was experiencing much the same thing on a level that he'd be aware of even in his sleep: his body was melting and shrinking away until nothing remained of his true self or the adult self that he'd so briefly enjoyed… and for perhaps half a minute, Auldman could see the last remaining fragment of Dipper's real personality, struggling to find purchase in a brain that was now too young to contain it, writhing like a bug in molten wax; then sank beneath the subconscious and was smothered beneath a layer of dreams, never to be seen again.

Satisfied, Auldman then began anew: with nothing left of Dipper's original consciousness to get in the way, his mind could be safely reshaped into Callum's image without any fear of the ritual being disrupted. They'd been delayed only for a few minutes; his timetable wasn't thrown too far off-target, and the ritual could begin as planned in less than half an hour.

Looking down at the slab, he could see that baby Dipper was already being subtly resculpted as he began to age again. Soon, he would be Callum in every way that mattered. And then…

Wait, what…?

Somewhere just on the periphery of his senses, a faint energy signature had flickered into existence.

There was an intruder in his realm.

Or possibly several intruders.

Pausing only to check that Dipper's transformation hadn't been interrupted, Auldman Northwest snatched up his cane, darted up through the roof of the building and glided off into the night with a hiss of irritation. In all his years spent ruling his kingdom of nightmares and banquets, he had only ever been forced to tolerate the presence of intruders once or twice, and then only because they'd been touched by Gaia and therefore impossible to kill. He'd been able to trick them into believing that they'd killed him, even fooled a few of the especially persistent ones into thinking that they'd even been able to destroy his machines, all so they'd report back to their superiors that the threat in Atlantic Island Park had finally been eliminated – never once knowing that they'd been had.

He'd never had to put up with ordinary human beings in his innermost sanctum unless he'd gone to the trouble of luring them to his table. If some random prole had actually managed to get this far… well, perhaps it was time for him to remind Solomon Island of the penalty for burglary in these parts.


"And you never even apologised!"

"You didn't apologise either!"

"I complained first!"

"I was hurt worse than you were!"

"No-you-weren't!"

"Crampelter broke my arm, you knucklehead! How the hell were you more hurt than me? He didn't even glance in your direction!"

"First, how was I know she was Crampelter's girlfriend?! I just suggested – I never said you should actually ask her out!"

"Oh really? 'Hey, Ford, don't you think it's time you got a girlfriend of your own? Why don't you ask Cindy for a date? She's single!' Your words, Stanley, not mine."

"Secondly, I didn't say I was hurt by Crampelter breaking your arm, I was hurt by what you said afterwards!"

"I didn't say anything!"

"Exactly! You didn't talk to me for three days, no matter how many times I apologised! Dad was already making my life a living hell over that, and I just wanted to talk to someone who wouldn't treat me like I'd barbecued the golden goose, and you wouldn't even look at me!"

"I was in pain, you jackass!"

"So was I!"

"Not as much as-"

There was a pause, as two extremely agitated figures stopped in mid-rant, drew their canteens from their belts, and hastily doused themselves in ice-cold water.

"Jesus," Stan gasped. "That was a bad one."

"I know," panted Ford. "Still, we're only talking about early high school grievances; we haven't gotten to anything about the Science Fair or the Portal yet. Either we're still working our way through all the minor problems we had up until then, or we've well and truly healed our psychological wounds on that front."

"That's easy to say now that we've gotten our thoughts back in order. I feel like any minute now, we're going to start hitting each other – or worse. I mean, just being in the park itself was bad enough, but in here, every step of the way makes my head hurt."

By now, they were just outside the House of Horrors; the Pyramidion's drone had already parted ways with them and was busy making energy waves around the perimeter in the hopes of drawing the Bogeyman's attention. Unfortunately, there was still no way of knowing if it worked until the Pyramidion called them on the commlink… or until the Bogeyman caught them breaking in.

Meanwhile, the two had been stuck dealing with the effects of the siphoning, and while it hadn't been as bad as some of the nastiest cases from back in the eighties, it had been just excruciating enough to leave them at each other's throats for most of the journey: it was like being stuck in the backseat during the ugliest, mean-spirited roadtrip in the multiverse, with no entertainment, no rest-stops, and full bladders every mile of the journey. More than once, the two of them had very nearly started throwing punches before they'd belatedly worked out that a splash of ice-cold water was enough to nullify the worst of the emotional distortions. With neither the time nor the inclination to jump in the nearby lake, they'd been forced to repeatedly douse themselves in water from their canteens.

But it was worth it: they'd made it to the House of Horrors. Now, the really trying part of the journey began.

"Okay," said Ford, as they swung the door open, "you know the route to the basement, right?"

Stan took a deep breath, braced himself against the siphoning, and tried not to scream. "Yes, I know it – we've been over it twenty times, Ford. Right, left, centre, left, centre, upstairs, right, three doors across, downstairs, downstairs again, and downstairs; the Pyramidion made it as clear as possible without electrocuting me! Also, there's just one thing I wanna know: what happens if the Bogeyman or Northwest or Winter or whatever we're calling him decides to mess around with the interior walls?"

There was an awkward silence, broken only by the audible groan and creak of the dilapidated lobby around them.

"Uh… if that actually happens, then the floor plan Bob gave us is completely invalidated and you might not be able to get to the basement in time. In which case-"

"We're screwed. Okay then… what happens if the Pyramidion's distraction doesn't work?"

"Well, Northwest will know we're in the building as soon as we get inside and he'll probably hunt us down, mess around with the interior walls, or worse. In which case-"

"We're screwed, I get it. What about if Lorraine isn't totally under, like we were hoping? What if Northwest sicks her on me – or you, or both of us?"

Ford considered this for a moment, as they continued through the lobby.

"We're screwed," he said simply.

"You haven't said what'll happen if you can't sabotage the machinery, though."

"We'll, we may not actually be screwed in that case: it's theoretically possible for you to rescue Dipper and Lorraine without the Bogeyman catching you, provided that you're quick enough on your feet – and the Pyramidion's distraction works, and the floor plan isn't invalidated, and Lorraine isn't brainwashed into killing you… and I know that sounds like a lot of provisos, but believe me it is definitely possible for you to save the day all on your own. Theoretically."

Stan blinked. "Theoretically?" he echoed.

Ford at least had the decency to look embarrassed. "Well," he said sheepishly, "there are a lot of provisos, as I said, but it is possible."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Ford. Okay, okay… we've got about half our canteens left: that should be enough to get us there and back before we start losing our minds. You ready?"

"About as much as I ever will be. Are you?"

"I don't think we'll ever be ready. But if we waste any more time trying to get ready, then Northwest is going to kill Dipper and destroy the world. So…" Stan sucked in a deep breath, steeled himself against the siphoning again. "Let's get going. Good luck, Ford."

"You too, Stan."


Through his electronic eyes, Bob reviewed the scene, and knew at once that something was very, very wrong.

As planned, he'd sent his drone to the far end of the building and begun emitting the energy signatures that would get Auldman Northwest's attention. At this very moment, the drone was projecting a steady pulse of stored Anima, and through the drone's various senses, he could sense that the master of the House of Horrors was moving to investigate – one big, fat blob of vampiric, power-hungry post-human monstrosity… but he wasn't going far enough.

Auldman had stopped in the corridor directly adjacent to the back wall and wasn't budging a step further.

Logically, it didn't make sense: the Anima should have drawn him like a magnet – it was the kind of energy that Auldman's machines had been specifically designed to siphon off. So why wasn't the old bastard taking the bait? Either he didn't think the energy was worth his time, or…

…or he was smelling a rat.

But why would he suspect anything when he was so desperate for more power?

Bob was still wondering this when a bolt of unbelievably potent magic rippled through the wall of the building and struck the drone head-on, shattering it into a million smouldering pieces.

Immediately, Bob directed another drone from the Illuminati field headquarters to replace it, but with so many barriers in the way, Bob could already tell that it would be several minutes before it arrived on the scene – and by then it might already be to late.

As the last of the drone's sensors flickered out, Bob heard the all-too-familiar voice of Auldman Northwest whispering, "Sorry, whoever you are: guess nobody told you that I can tell the difference between Anima fresh from the source and Anima that came out of a battery… and I can also sense mortal intruders even easier than I can sense machines."

Back in the heart of Brooklyn, Bob uttered a long string of obscenities in a mind-shredding blend of Enochian and Atlantean, vowing with every last supernormal particle of his being that he wouldn't rest until he'd shredded the last of the Northwests to bloody froth – and then found a way to fuck the decomposing remnants of his soul into oblivion.

This was the second time that Auldman had pulled the wool over his All-Seeing Eye.

There would not be a third.


With the equipment he'd borrowed, it took about five minutes for Ford to uncover the conduits for Auldman's machines – give or take a few seconds spent dousing himself with ice-cold water to hold off the effects of the siphoning.

According to what Bob had learned through eavesdropping and general analysis of Auldman's work, the machinery that had been designed to harvest energy from the Gaia Engine and store it had originally been hidden within Atlantic Island Park alongside the same machines that had siphoned the emotions of guests. However, once Auldman had finally unlocked his true power and built a pocket dimension for himself, he'd at least partly taken the harvesters and siphons with him: they existed simultaneously in the real world and in Auldman's private world, with the pipes leading all the way back to the House of Horrors, where he would be able to imbue himself with the extracted energies.

Through the scanning equipment he'd been able to improvise, Ford could see the various conduits spread out across the map like neon purple veins, all converging on this building and uniting into a single mainline tunnelling down into the basement. Bit by bit, he followed the trail to a mezzanine level clustered with decaying cardboard cutouts and long-neglected accoutrements from the original exhibit, until at last he could see the main pipe itself oozing inside the wall like some obscene mimicry of a throat.

Looking at it all, Ford could only smile in morbid fascination. This thaumaturgical network of devices easily one of the most horrific and incredible things he'd ever witnessed – a grisly system used for siphoning the emotions from innocent human beings and turning them into fuel for the draining the power of a god. From everything he'd learned, the cost was beyond description: countless hundreds of guests emotionally warped by the siphoning and a handful more driven to insanity or worse, and Auldman Northwest transformed into a monster beyond human ken. In much the same way that he couldn't help but admire the nightmarish brilliance of Bill Cipher even in the worst days of his paranoid meltdown, Ford couldn't quite stop himself from marvelling at the twisted genius of this machinery. It was a shame that it had been claimed by a member of the Northwest family – he'd have liked to meet the architect that Auldman had bought this stuff from.

But of course, there was another reason for the smile: it was as he'd hoped – he could sabotage after all.

Among Ford's arsenal of equipment was a WAND Anima manipulator, borrowed straight from Innsmouth Academy: he wasn't familiar with all its possible uses, but he could generate a negative charge in the conduit, sealing it shut for the time being and temporarily disabling the harvesters. As long as those machines were out of action, Auldman wouldn't be able to put his plan into action…

…well, provided that he didn't decide to sacrifice Dipper without checking that his machines were in working order. Auldman had been a psychopath long before he'd become a monster, but hopefully he wasn't deranged or reckless enough to start his plan for world domination without checking his equipment.

Ford reached into his coat and brought out the WAND, charging it up to interface directly with the conduit, ready to use it exactly as the manual had indicated… and then, from somewhere behind him, there was the distinctive click of a hammer being cocked.

"Drop the WAND," said a cold voice. "Put your hands in the air and step away from the conduit. Don't even think of going for a weapon or I'll kill your brother as well."

Ford knew at once that he'd been caught off-guard, and he wouldn't be able to complete the sabotage in time before his attacker killed him… and with a threat to Stanley's life added to the mix, Ford dare not continue. Heart hammering, he very slowly lowered the WAND to the floor, took a step back from the conduit, and raised his hands in surrender.

"Good," said the voice. "Turn around."

He obediently turned to face the speaker and promptly found himself staring down the barrel of a Desert Eagle. Behind it, the icy blue eyes of Colonel Utterson stared back at him, pupils narrowed to pinpricks and haloed by bloodshot sclera – a physiological side-effect of the siphoning process.

"Now," hissed Utterson, rabid slobber oozing from his lower lip. "I'm going to give you one chance to help me; disobey my orders for any reason whatsoever, and I will make sure you die slowly. So, listen carefully: you're going to modify Nathaniel Winter's machines so that all the energies he'll extract will be redirected into me. You get me, Pines?"

"Yes," said Ford, trying not to let his despair become audible. "You want to become a god."

"Good. Now, get to work. I've been waiting thirty long, frustrating years for this prize, and you're not going to keep me from it now. You try to fuck with me, Pines, and I'll make sure you get to see what I'll do to that precious brother of yours – before I kill you both."


For twelve heart-stopping seconds, Stan thought he'd taken a wrong turn somewhere down the line – or that Northwest had found him and was shuffling the maze around just to screw around with him.

When you were navigating a place like this, getting lost was kind of inevitable: after all, this had once been meant as some kind cross between a Haunted House and a House of Mirrors, but when you were out at an amusement park, or carnival, or whatever, you didn't have to worry about the place actually rebuilding itself around you.

Then, he found the library – all set-dressing of course, complete with a secret entrance that the guests would have to find in order to escape the maze, one of many final additions made to the park before it had been shut down. As expected, the door had been left wide open: beyond lay the flight of stairs that, prior to the closure of the park, would have led visitors outside; now, it led to the basement.

Trembling, Stan crept down the stairs, fully expecting to be ambushed at any minute – either by a monster or by Lorraine. To his amazement, he made it to the basement landing without any sign of an attacker, eventually creeping out into the harsh concrete box that was the House of Horror's basement.

As expected, Lorraine was sitting on the slab, placidly staring at the wall and humming a nursery rhyme. Less-expected was the toddler sitting next to her, draped in a Tentacled Avenger t-shirt clearly meant for a much older child, and practically swimming in his oversized shorts; like Lorraine, he seemed oblivious to Stan's presence, and seemed mainly interested in humming Five Little Ducks – pausing occasionally to suck his thumb. A quick glance at the boy's face confirmed that this was not Dipper – not anymore, at any rate. Stan was taken aback, needless to say: he'd seen that Dipper was getting younger as he got closer to becoming Callum, but he hadn't expected him to get this young.

"Lorraine?" he whispered. "Can you hear me?"

Apparently unperturbed by the disturbance, Lorraine looked up at him with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Hmm," she said mildly.

"Um, do you know who I am?"

"Of course," she said, staring right through him. "You're a ghost. It's okay. There's lots of ghosts out here; they're drawn to me, and they all want to give me advice. I don't mind it: they're the only company we get down here. Callum doesn't seem to mind them, do you, Little Duck?"

"Callum" shook his head, hiccupped, and suddenly appeared to grow, the oversized shirt suddenly fitting itself more snugly around him as he did so.

For her part, Lorraine didn't appear to notice.

Stan took the deepest breath he'd ever taken in his entire life: this was the bit that was going to backfire on him. "Well, if we're here to provide advice," he said, in a tone of forced jollity, "how about this: let's go for a walk."

"A walk?"

"Yeah, you know? A nice long walk on Solomon Island? Stretch the legs a bit, get some cool night air into the lungs?"

He braced himself for the inevitable explosion of paranoia and rage – already pretty difficult, considering he was already trying to hold off the effects of the siphoning.

Instead, Lorraine only looked sad and confused. "Where would we go?" she asked. "I… we're safe here. We're happy here. We're happy."

She smiled, but her eyes were full of tears.

"We're happy," she repeated, but without conviction. "Aren't we?"

In the awkward silence that followed, "Callum" hiccupped and aged again, this time into a waifish-looking five-year-old. By now, the shirt fit him perfectly, and Lorraine quickly busied herself with putting his shoes on.

That moment, Stan knew exactly what to do next: with Lorraine and Dipper completely out of it, neither of them would put up any kind of resistance, so all he'd have to do was throw her over his shoulder, tuck him under his free arm, and then get the hell out of dodge.

And he might have done exactly that…

…if he hadn't heard the distinctive sound of a walking cane thudding to a halt behind him.

Stan turned, reaching for the grenade in his pocket, but before he could even grasp it, something snaked around his throat, wrenching him off his feet and slamming him against the wall. Gagging, he reached up to grab the noose before it could tighten any further, only for another set of bonds to wrap themselves around his wrists, dragging them behind his back and tying them swiftly together.

For a moment, Stan thought there was going to be another step to this nightmare: he was certain the noose was going to hoist him off his feet, and that he was going to slowly strangle to death – that he was going to die exactly as Rico had threatened to do to him all those years ago.

Then, he heard the laughter.

"Welcome, Stanley Pines," said Auldman Northwest. "You're just in time for the show of the century! Unless you'd care to stop by the concession stand and avail yourself to popcorn, I suggest you take a seat, get comfortable, and relax until the lights go down; we'll be starting the show in just a few minutes…"


A/N: Any guesses as to what happens next? Feel free to let me know in as many lovely, long reviews as you care to concoct.

For those of you who'd like a hint in advance, there's the code and the riddle:

Uork gsv Qfwtvnvmg.
Slow blfi olevw lmvh xolhv, hdvvgormt.
Ivnvnyvi blf kzhg nrhgzpvh -
gsvb xzm svok lgsvih ulitrev gsvnhvoevh.
Ivnvnyvi: Vnnz dzmgh svi gvwwb yvzi.