Robbing the Memory Bank

(June 2015)

5: In the Clearing

From the Journals of Dipper Pines: Monday. Right after our run, before I even showered, I asked Wendy to cover for me, and she said it wouldn't be a problem. I didn't tell her what I was about to do, but she probably had a good sense of it. Anyway, she didn't try to talk me out of it.

We had run through town and back, and I just kept going past the Shack, down the Mystery Trail and past the bonfire glade. At first, I missed the track to where I was going—the undergrowth has shot up a lot since last summer. But then I saw the Talking Rock—it's a rock with supposedly prehistoric Native American pictographs carved on it, except Grunkle Stan once admitted he had etched the carvings into the rock with an electric engraver and, as he said, "a buttload of batteries."

He had randomly chosen the symbols. They ran: Square; upside-down V; three dots; X; upside-down A; backward, angular P; upside-down V. Then a second line: Circle with dot in center; straight line; X; arrowhead pointing left; upside-down V; small triangle; circle with dot.

According to Stan, it said in an ancient pre-Columbian Native American language "Place of Mystery."

However, I knew Grunkle Stan, and long ago I worked out that it really said, "WELCOME SUCKERS."

Anyway, when I saw the Talking Rock off the Mystery Trail to the right, I knew I had missed the harder-to-see path. I backtracked slowly and finally found it. Then it wasn't too far in the woods to the Bill Cipher effigy.

It was starting to look soft with a coat of moss. I brushed some fallen twigs off its hat and cleared some leaves from the fingers of the outstretched hand. The fallen wooden beam, once part of the Fearamid, was where I usually sat, but now it sprouted brown toadstools and was green with lichen. I just sat on the ground instead, on a pile of fallen leaves, damp but not soaking wet.

I settled down, closed my eyes, started to breathe deeply, and slipped into the Mindscape.

It is very weird there. I mean, you have a kind of body, or at least think you do, but if something ordinarily fatal happens—like if you get a big hole blasted all the way through your chest, let's say—you don't feel any pain from it and, if you don't believe you're damaged, you really aren't. You can cope with something like that. In fact, you can even fill it in and make it heal just by thinking and visualizing.

But aside from that, it's obvious you have left reality behind.

For one thing, you're in a black-and-white world. Except for yourself, or people you know, and, if you spot him, Bill Cipher. People are usually in color, unless they're strangers, and then they tend to be blurry and almost impossible to see clearly or describe.

Same with inanimate objects. All the backgrounds and landscapes and buildings are in shades of gray. And they're wacked-out. You might see a swing hanging from two chains that are just stuck in the air, not attached to anything. But if you sit in it, you can swing. Or maybe you stay still and the whole world rocks back and forth under you. I mean, it's insane.

And in this insane place, I was looking for a notoriously insane character. In fact, he's been known to brag about it. I was looking for Bill Cipher. Up until last summer, I've always managed to contact him here.

This time, though—I looked around the shades-of-gray world. No Bill, no yellow triangle, just the stone statue (not mossy in the Mindscape, but clean and almost polished). I tried calling him—meaning I thought about yelling his name. I don't think I produced a sound in the real world, but in the Mindscape, I made the ground shake with the volume I gave it. Think it there, and it happens.

The Mindscape doesn't have echoes, though. The sound fell away to silence. Nothing.

I wasn't sure what was going on. Once I could reliably find him here. True, last fall Bill had manifested away from the glade. In one case, thousands of miles away. Somehow or other, he was gaining the ability to fake physical human form—he appeared to Stan and Ford way off in Florida, and once to Wendy outside her house.

Now—he seemed to have left our dimension.

But I needed his advice!

It looked like I wouldn't get it. I started to bring myself out of the Mindscape, but then, before forcing myself to wake up, I'd try one last time. I thought—not even speaking in the Mindscape—"Bill, you left a little of yourself in my heart. If we've got a connection, let me be where you are."

For a moment I thought I'd died. I mean, everything went out, like blowing out a candle inside a mausoleum at midnight when there's no moon. Everything was black. I couldn't see my hand in front of my face.

If I had a hand.

If I had a face.

But then I heard a familiar, though thin, voice: "Pine Tree! You caught me in an awkward position."

"Where are you?"

"Where you can't go. But you can sense how it is. Comfortable, isn't it?"

Now that he said it—yeah, it was warm, and I felt light and floaty. But everything was absolutely dark. "Why can't I see?"

"Not much to see yet. Don't worry your great big head, kid. By the way, how's my favorite lumberjack gal?"

"Leave Wendy out of this!"

"Sheesh, jealous, are we, hmmm? Hey, Pine Tree, did she get rid of those sneaky snakey slithery ssssserpentsssss?"

"We got rid of them together. And that CD cover that called them."

"You're welcome."

"I wasn't going to thank you!"

"It was preemptive thanks. See, Pine Tree? I'm getting to be politer than you!"

"Listen, Bill, somebody's killing people. Ford thinks it may be someone who somehow is connected with the Zodiac."

"Again, with the Zodiac! I wish I'd never created it. It turns out to be one big pain in the acute angle!"

"I need your help, Bill. Someone's messing with Pacifica—"

"Llama llady?" he said. I don't know how he got two l's in "lady," but I heard both.

"Yeah, that's her. That's what worries me, because I think somebody may have learned that the llama on the wheel is Pacifica."

"Blondie. Still think you missed a sitting duck with that one, kid! But Ice is cooler, I suppose. Hmm. Zodiac and there's a killer loose. Sounds familiar. Oh, yeah. Kid, I'll be dishonest with you. I'll help you."

"OK, do it."

"You got wax in your ears? I said DIS-honest. Honestly, I can't help you. I'm sort of occupying at the moment."

"You mean 'occupied.'"

"Pine Tree, I don't think what you mean I do."

I groaned. "Not even any advice?"

For a few seconds, or maybe a week—time's funny in the Mindscape, and I don't mean it makes you laugh—I thought he wasn't going to answer. But then he did:

"Ten of you, most old, some new. Each is right, each is wrong. Each is weak, each is strong. One won't do, or three or two—the power of ten is a slim chance to win."

"What are you, a poet now?" I asked.

"I got a lot of time on my hands, kid. And just this chat is taking a lot of energy. Best I can do. Old Axolotl's got me, kinda tied up with rules. But chin up! We'll meet again."

He started humming the tune, and that made me vibrate, and then somebody was shaking me, and—

"Dipper, wake up!"

He came to, seeing the woods spin around him as if he were riding on a carousel. "Mabel?"

"You dork!" She punched his shoulder. "We've been hunting you for hours! Why'd you just disappear?"

Dipper stood up, last year's crisp dry leaves cascading off him, his legs as noodly as they had been after Rumble McSkirmish had pounded on him. The light looked wrong. "What time is it?"

"Four o'clock! You didn't come and you didn't come, and Wendy was starting to get real worried! You didn't answer your phone—"

"I don't have my phone," he said. "No pockets in these shorts. I don't have any way to carry it when we're running."

"I'm gonna get you one of those armbands, then!" Mabel said. "Why'd you come out here, anyhow?"

He said, "I wanted to talk to—huh!"

Because he wasn't in the clearing around the stone effigy at all. He had been lying on, or from the feel of his clothes, in a pile of leaves under the eaves of the forest, across from the Talking Rock. His tee shirt was full of leaves, as were the legs of his running shorts. "What, was I buried?"

"Under the leaves! Except for your head, and that blended in," Mabel said. "Soos didn't spot you when he took the tram down the trail—"

"Everybody would be looking at the rock," Dipper said. "On the right side of the trail, not the left."

"Yeah, well, I spotted your pine-tree hat and found you down in the leaves. What were you doing, hibernating?"

Dipper shook his shirt. He thought he had a good idea of who had stuffed the scratchy dead leaves inside his clothes. Oh, very funny, Bill.

Mabel had taken out her phone and had dialed. She said, "I found him, Wendy! Yeah, he's all right, except he's a great big poop-head! We're not far from the Shack. See you in a few."

She turned off her phone and glared at Dipper. "Wendy is gonna be so mad at you! Come on!"

She walked about ten steps, then seemed to realize he wasn't with her. She turned around and yelled, "Dipper! What?"

"Let me borrow your phone," he said. He called Wendy. "Hi, this is Dipper."

"Dude! You had us all so worried!"

"Yeah, well, I was trying to get in touch with Bill Cipher, and somehow I spent a lot more time at it than I'd thought. Listen, you have a pen and paper handy?"

"Just a sec. OK, pen, pen—here's a pencil."

"That'll do," Dipper said. "These are symbols, not letters. Draw what I describe, as best you can. I'll see if I can decipher them when we get back."

He seemed to hear an echo in his mind: "Heh. Decipher. You almost had a joke there, Pine Tree!"

Dipper, frowning at the new, fresh symbols—larger than the ones Stan had made—carved into the Talking Rock said, "OK, first line: Circle with a dot in the middle. Two vertical lines. Triangle. One dot. Lower-case b. Uh—a pi symbol, that's close enough. Upside-down V. Triangle. Next line: Uh, capital X, but with a line across the bottom legs. Single dot. Lower-case b. The pi again. Upside-down V. Triangle. Read those back."

Wendy did.

"We're on our way," Dipper said. Then with Mabel's phone he took a photo of the new inscription. But when he looked at the picture, it just showed the blank gray rock. "Thought so."

"What, Brobro?" Mabel asked.

Dipper sighed. "Do you see letters on the rock here?" He pointed.

Mabel looked at the rock, then back at him. "You got rocks in your head? The letters are up there."

"Yeah, the ones that Grunkle Stan carved." Dipper ran his hands over the second inscription. He couldn't feel any indentations in the stone. "Somehow I'm seeing an inscription right here, too. But it must be an illusion. It doesn't show up in the photographs."

"Huh," Mabel said. "Well, that's nearly normal for Gravity Falls. I mean, it's no Gremloblin or Multibear, is it?"

"No," Dipper said. "But it's a message from Bill Cipher. If I can figure out what it means."

They followed the Mystery Trail back to the Shack. Wendy gave him one brief hug and then said, "Hit the showers, man! You smell like leaf mould."

"Yeah," Dipper said, smiling weakly. "And then—I'm starving. I'm going to have a snack and try to figure out the inscription you wrote down. Where is it?"

"Right here." Wendy handed him a sheet from the inventory clipboard.

"Wait," he said. "Didn't you copy down—"

"Yeah, dude, on the blank side, right—huh!"

The paper was blank, or almost.

There was a tiny drawing, no bigger than a quarter, of a triangle with a top hat, bowtie, and one eye. And, oh yes, two arms, two legs, and a cane.

Dipper growled, "Dammit, Bill!"

The cipher had vanished as completely as Cipher had, or so it seemed.