The family sat around the breakfast table the next morning. Cassandra ate quickly, Ashwin working to keep up (or at least make sure he got fed before his cousin dragged him out the door.)
"Where are you guys headed today?" his dad, Matt, asked, eating his own breakfast and glancing through The Gravity Falls Gossiper.
"Out into the woods again," Ashwin told him, before noticing how little food Cassandra had left and eating most of a muffin in one bite.
"You guys sure spend a lot of time out there," Christy noted. "it's good to see you getting outside, Cassie."
"Mm-hm," Cassandra grunted in agreement, before gulping down some water for good measure.
"Gimme' five minutes," Ashwin insisted when Cassandra hopped up from the table.
"OK, I'll go pack up," Cassandra decided, striding from the room.
As soon as she returned, backpack over her shoulder and blue and white cap stuck on her head, Ashwin hopped up, aware that his cousin was so excited she might explode, and Faith stuffed her mouth with as much of the food on her plate as she could manage before hurrying after them.
"I remember when we had that much energy," Mabel mused, giving her bother a playful jab.
Abel just 'hm'ed back in acknowledgement. He had only had a cup of coffee all morning, and had spent most of his time holding that mug and staring distractedly at the wall.
"Hey, Mabel, can I talk to you for a second?" he prompted, taking his sister aside. She didn't hesitate - if Abel was this out of it something was probably wrong. Or at least important. Her concerns only multiplied as he lead her as far away from their spouses as possible.
"Mabel, I'm worried."
"About what?" she asked, trying to play it off but sensing the severity of his tone.
"I- I had a dream last night. A dream with Bill."
"Di- Abel, you've had Bill dreams on and off for years! You know they don't mean anything."
"Usually they don't," he agreed, "but I had the same dream twice this time. And it wasn't one of those where I just know that Bill was in it, or where I relieve some even more twisted version of weirdmageddon, or any of those probably-normal-dreams ones. He spoke to me. We held a conversation."
Mabel's face fell. He was serious.
"And if he'd just been screwing with me that would've been fine - I could shrug that off. But he said Cassie- Cassie's in danger. Mabel, he said he was going to hurt Cassie."
"She'll be fine," she tried to reassure him, "for one thing, we defeated Bill. Even if he isn't totally dead I'm sure he's stripped of most of his power. He can't come into the physical world, anyway! He can't do anything to Cassie. And she has her cousins and most of the mythical creatures to keep an eye on her. Everything will be OK!"
"I don't know, Mabel…"
"We could call Wendy, get the Corduroys to keep a real sharp eye out. Heck, the whole town is keeping an eye on our kids! And with out the society of the blind eye everybody knows about the weird stuff. There's nowhere safer for her than in Gravity Falls."
"I guess so…"
"I know so," Mabel emphasized. "she'll be fine, bro-bro. I promise."
The cousins were barely out of sight of the rental cabin when a familiar, not-entirely-welcome voice hollered at them.
"H-hey, Pines!"
Cassandra grunted in resigned distaste as Mervin jogged up to them,
"Listen, you said I could show you this thing later, and it's later now. So! I found this neat old statue in the forrest. I think it might be some kind of occult thing, c'mon you gotta' come see it!"
"Occult?" she echoed, her curiosity slipping out in spite of herself.
Mervin nodded enthusiastically.
"Alright, this I gotta' see," she admitted. Today's awesome adventure could wait for the time it would take to see an occult relic. "but if it's just an old St. Francis with graffiti on it, I swear-"
"No, no, cooler than that! I promise!" he insisted, leading them into the woods.
Cassandra was starting to feel like they might be walking in circles, and was about to ask if Mervin really knew where he was going, when they stepped out of the trees and into a clearing.
"Tah-da!" he beamed, standing beside a stone carving stuck in the grass. "I think it's some sort of likeness of a higher being."
"I- I've never seen anything like it," Cassandra admitted, walking circles around it and looking it over. It seemed to be a one-eyed triangle with a top hat. It had some discoloration with age, moss had consumed a good portion of it, and the top hat was chipped. It had a hand outstretched, and Cassandra couldn't decide if it looked more like jazz hands or an offer of a handshake. (The former, she thought, was funnier.) "I mean, I guess, if we're honest with ourselves, it could be some abandoned modern art or something," she noted.
"But- but what if it isn't?" Mervin prompted, "I bet it's from an ancient religion."
"What?" Cassandra snorted, "It looks old, but not ancient! Wouldn't it be all the way buried if it was 'ancient'?"
"Well- still, it's cool!"
"Yeah, it's neat," Cassandra accepted.
"Dare you to shake it's hand," Mervin added.
Cassandra raised an eyebrow,
"Why 'dare'? Would I look stupid? Did you see a bird poop on it or something?"
"No, no!" Mervin insisted, "Just, like, what if it's some 'ancient evil' just waiting to be awakened?" he elaborated in a joking tone.
"Pshh, as if," Cassandra retorted, taking the stone hand. "see? Nothing hap-"
In a flash all the color was drained from the world, and an energy rose up from the stone statue, growing from a black dot, to a triangle black enough to be a hole in space and time itself, before bursting into a triangular, yellow being with black noodle arms and legs, and a top hat and bow tie for good measure. The spitting image of the stone carving.
The demon laughed a good natured laugh, though it had a little bit of an edge to it. And Mervin was relieved to realize that Bill hadn't lied - this was different from when he'd first summoned the dream demon. Instead of a faded graphite sketch the world resembled more of an old black-and-white photograph, and Bill himself now popped with color. He had grown stronger through being freed from the stone.
"Wow!" Bill burst, "Boy is it good to be back! You get a cramp holding your arm out that long! Woah, hey," he noted, catching the stunned, concerned looks on the three cousins' faces, "no worries kiddos," he addressed the trio, "I ain't gonna' hurt ya', heck, I'm just glad to be free!" he assured them, drifting up to Cassandra, "Nice birthmark, kid," he noted, tossing a gesture at her arm, "Orion, the huntsman. Bet you're a good monster hunter! And a mark like that makes you a weird-y, just like me!" he boasted, "I would wink, but I've only got one eye. Point is, you'll do amazing things! Trust me, this eye's all-seeing!" he added, giving her a playful jab in the side.
"Th-thanks," Cassandra responded, watching the glowing, yellow being with interest, confusion, and a little bit of awe.
Mervin had to work hard to hold back his jealousy. Even when he hired a demon to screw her up she got more praise than him. He had to remember that this was all part of the plan;
"You gotta' get 'em to trust you. Drag 'em in, hook, line, and sinker!" Bill had told him. Mervin glanced at his gloved hands; he was weird, too, and he and Bill were after the same thing. Bill was on his side, not hers.
"Well, I really appreciate the freedom, kids, but I gotta' get going," Bill admitted, "I've been stuck here far too long! So much to do! So much to see! See ya'round, Sapling, short-stack, Protostar! I got my eye on you!"
And in a blinding flash he was gone, and the world was colorful again.
The sounds of nature were all that could be heard in the clearing as the kids stared, stunned, at where Bill had been just moments before.
"That was… something," Cassandra decided, shaking the effects away. "H-how long do you think he'd been in there? I mean, there's no mention in the notebooks," she confirmed, flipping through the first one, "so probably more than thirty years! Maybe fifty! Maybe a hundred! This is fascinating! I've gotta' look into this," she realized. "wow, Mervin! For once you found something actually cool!" she acknowledged, giving him a pat on the shoulder. "Hey, listen, we were gonna' go track down a secret hideout from these notebooks, you wanna' come?"
"What?" Mervin and Ashwin spluttered.
"Yeah, why not? You showed us something cool, we may as well return the favor."
"OK, what is it?" Mervin asked, trotting along beside the group.
"So, I was reading the second notebook," Cassandra explained, pulling out the blue book and flipping to the back pages, "and it talks about this secret base hidden under a tree! It says it used to be a bunker, but the writer and his sister refurbished it to make it an awesome clubhouse! I have no idea how it will have held up after almost thirty years - this is dated around 2016 - but it tells you the location! But only in relation to The Mystery Shack. We're meeting Elowen there 'cause she knows from trees, so she might be better at spotting an out of place tree."
"A secret base?" Mervin reiterated, "That's amazing! I've only read about potential hiding spots, never a real, live base!"
"Yeah, it's pretty sweet," Cassandra grinned. "I'm hoping there'll be cool artifacts down there. Maybe a hint to the writer's past! I mean, I have no idea who wrote these!" she pointed out, brandishing a notebook. "Or what they were doing in The Shack basement! Or why there's a basement in The Shack!"
"There's a basement in The Shack?!" Mevin squawked.
Cassandra regretted mentioning that, and worked quickly to find a diversion.
"Hey, there's Elowen!" she blurted as they reached The Shack. Cassandra rushed up to her friend, "Are you ready to find a secret base?"
"What's Mervin doing here?"
"Eh, I thought I'd bring him along," Cassandra shrugged. "he found something that was actually cool for once, so I thought I'd humor him."
"Really?" Elowen prompted.
Cassandra shrugged again.
"Whatever," Elowen accepted, "If it's fine with you, I guess I'm cool with it. It's your mystery," she acknowledged, as Cassandra turned to the mishmash of directions and map parts in the second notebook. "but how do we know if this thing is even still intact? It's been what, twenty some odd years since those notebooks were written."
"That's part of the fun of it!" Cassandra retorted, heading into the woods, "It ads to the sense of mystery!"
"I'm just saying, it could've caved in, or it could just be the equivalent of somebody's dusty basement. I just don't want you to be disappointed."
"Even if it's not in tip-top shape that could just raise more mysteries!" Cassandra told her, "I think anything in there could be cool."
"Whatever you say," she shrugged.
"I don't quite get it either," Ashwin muttered to Elowen. "but a secret base sounds cool."
"Oh, hell yeah," Elowen agreed.
"How's your bother?" Ashwin added.
"Uh, which one?" Elowen responded.
"Paul."
"Oh, he's good, as far as I know. He's been hanging out with Stacey more-"
"Who's Stacey?" Ashwin asked.
"Stacey? You know, Stacey Valentino? Oh! Right, sorry, Lilith. Lilith's been hanging around more."
"Oh, oh cool."
"So you said something about a basement-?" Mervin started to ask, but Cassandra found another diversion.
"Hey, guys! Start looking around for weird tree branches!" she ordered, "I think we're coming up on the base!"
All heads immediately went up toward the sky.
"Does it say about how high up it is?" Elowen asked.
"Nope. But it's up there - somebody had to shimmy up the tree with a belt to reach it."
"That branch looks like a hand!" Faith pointed out.
Everyone turned to where she was pointing.
"Oh, yeah, it totally does," Cassandra acknowledged. "But that's not what we need, unfortunately."
"That one looks rusted," Elowen noticed.
"Really?" the rest of the group asked, clumping around her.
"Yeah. And I think I see a screw."
Mervin knocked on the tree trunk,
"Yep, that's metal alright."
"That's gotta' be it," Cassandra concluded. "But we have to hit it - make it shift up."
"I went to lumberjack camp, but I'm not sure I could pull that off," Elowen admitted.
"Do we have to go home now?" Ashwin asked.
"Never!" Mervin insisted.
"Hey, you don't make that call," Cassandra retorted. "but no, we're not giving up yet. We just have to figure out how to- geez, I don't know, climb a nearby tree? Toss a rope up the- no, wait, the lever goes up, not down. Maybe if we-"
"FIRE IN THE HOLE!" Faith shrieked, sprinting back into the clearing and hurling a rock a the funky branch. It hit a foot or two below the lever, but the group was enthralled.
"I like the way you think," Elowen concluded, pulling a hatchet out of her bag.
"You carry that around all the time?!" Mervin yelped.
"You bet! Everybody DUCK!" she hollered.
You didn't have to tell anybody twice. She hurled the tool and it bounced off the fake tree, sticking into the ground several feet away. There was a 'thunk', and everyone looked up as the tree began to sink into the ground. Elowen grabbed her hatchet and the group gathered by the edge of the pit being formed around the sinking tree. They watched it sink deeper and deeper before Ashwin spoke up,
"It's a staircase!"
"And we're going to follow it!" Cassandra decided, whipping out a flashlight and heading for the top step. Faith followed right on her tail, giddy with excitement, and the rest of the group stepping cautiously down the wooden stairs behind them.
"So, do those notebooks mention a light switch, or-?" Mervin asked as the darkness around them got deeper and deeper.
"No, they don't," Cassandra admitted. "I guess we'll just have to see for ourselv-" Cassandra hit solid ground and the already tense group heard something 'click.'
Thoughts of booby traps, monsters, hermits and all the terrible things that could be in an abandoned underground hideout flew through their minds before being quieted, as christmas lights flickered on all throughout the underground room. There must be some kind of motion sensor in the doorway. Cassandra stepped in, letting the rest of the group down, and looked over the room in astonishment. Faith bolted for a beanbag chair against one wall and jumped in.
The room looked like something out of an old room design catalogue. White and colored christmas lights, colorful, 'groovy-looking' chairs, shelves full of books, art projects, supplies, particularly resilient snack cakes - this was a sibling hide out, just like what you might dream you could build under a blanket fort, or in the rec room of the new house. Sure, it was old and dusty, but there was an element of joy that communicated through the years.
And hanging on the wall was a cork board, covered in printed-out photos, Polaroids, any pin-able trinkets, a mystery shack bumper sticker, and a big photo of two brown-haired teens, brother and sister, grinning big. It looked like the sister had taken the selfie. And above the cork board was a piece of wood with words scrawled across it in the handwritings Cassandra had been reading for the last couple weeks. It read:
'Dipper & MABEL Pines' SECRET BASE'
Words lost in her throat Cassandra just grabbed at Ashwin's arm, trying to get his attention to the boards.
He stared with her, jaw going slack.
"Is that- is that the notebook handwriting?" he asked, unable to take his eyes off the photos.
Cassandra could only nod furiously, equally transfixed.
"Pines-? Is that your parents?" Elowen asked.
Cassandra nodded some more.
"Woah. Did you know that?"
"No idea," Cassandra assured her, voice faint.
"What? What're we looking at?" Mervin asked.
"Ash," Cassandra managed, "do you realize what this means?"
"Our parents know about the mysterious stuff in Gravity Falls?"
"Everything our parents said was the truth."
"Like what?"
"The crazy stories, the tales of grandeur," she breathed, thinking over the true scope of this revelation.
"Punching a unicorn, dating a mermaid-" Ashwin realized.
"Switching bodies, living wax figures-!"
"Freeing a boy-band!"
"The president's key?!"
"So, they did everything in the notebooks," Elowen pointed out.
Cassandra's jaw fell even farther,
"My dad befriended the Multibear over BABBA! Aunt Mabel was kidnapped by gnomes! GRUNKLE SOOS ATE A CANDY MONSTER."
"Cool!" Faith chirped, still relaxing in the beanbag chair.
"I can't believe it!" Cassandra flipped frantically through the notebooks, trying to take it all in. "But- of course! How did I miss it? Their great uncle ran The Mystery Shack! A badass red-head! Woah! Wait," she skimmed pages, looking for something, "Isn't there something about- yeah! A journal by the other grunkl- Mervin!"
Mervin winced back.
"Mervin, lemme' see your binder!" Cassandra demanded, tossing the notebook aside for a moment.
"Why?" he asked, clutching it tighter.
"I need to see that symbol on the front again."
"W-what about it?"
"Just let me see it! Come on!"
Mervin turned the binder over for her to see, and Cassandra was in shock all over again.
"Ash! Ashwin, Mervin's binder!"
"What about it?" Ashwin asked, startled by Cassandra's second wind.
"The hand! If the notebooks were written by Dad, and he had a journal that was written by his great uncle-!"
"Great-grunkle Ford wrote the stuff in Mervin's binder?"
"YES!"
"Woah…"
"Oh my god, what if everything they said was true, too?" Cassandra realized.
"What, the sea monsters-?"
"And- and aliens?"
"Hitting on mermaids?!"
"Well, OK, Great-grunkle Stan isn't the most honest guy," Cassandra reasoned, "but the mermaid part is probably true!"
"This notebook is cool!" Faith piped up, flipping through, "The stuff in white ink makes it way more interesting!"
"White ink-?" Cassandra echoed, stepping over to look over Faith's shoulder. "Woah…" she breathed. The pages of the notebook had taken on a whole new life - more comments in her aunt's loopy handwriting, things clearly encoded in jumbles of letters or numbers. She looked up, and found that her little cousin was seated beneath a black-light poster, complete with black-light. "Invisible ink…"
The whole group of kids was crowded around now, looking over the pages.
Cassandra sat next to her cousin and took the notebook back, turning the pages, admiring all the drawings and comments and secrets hidden in the invisible writing.
"This is amazing," she gaped, "what if- maybe-" she pulled the other two notebooks out of her backpack. The first one had invisible ink, for sure, and with high hopes she opened the third notebook, hoping and praying that maybe invisible ink messages would tell her how to read the jumbled letters.
No such luck. There was writing in invisible ink, but it, too, was in code. But her disappointment was cut short as Mervin shoved his binder into the black-light. He wasn't so lucky - the old, photo-copied pages gave up no secrets. He made a noise of disappointment.
"Man, I could stay down here all day reading this stuff," Cassandra noted, settling in, "Hey! I can stay down here all day! Or- at least 'till lunch. Can we stay down here 'till lunch?"
"Sure," Ashwin shrugged.
"I don't think I've ever seen most of these books before," Elowen commented, looking over the spines on the bookshelves, "I've definitely never heard of The Sibling Brothers," she added, pulling a book off the shelf, "The Case of the Caper-Case Caper?" she read aloud.
As Cassandra dove into the notebooks head-on, trying to decode some of the invisible ink codes in the first two notebooks, the group looked around the hideout. Faith found some of the craft supplies and projects, Ashwin looked over the cork board, Elowen skimmed The Sibling Brothers, and Mervin went to mope in a corner. After staring at a particular hunk of wall for a while he spoke up:
"I think that's a door,"
"What?" Cassandra asked, perking up.
"That's a door. Look, it's all boarded up or something."
Elowen took out her glasses to get a better look at the boards and duct tape covering part of the wall,
"Weird," she concluded.
"We should open it," Mervin decided.
"Uh… no," Cassandra countered, "no we shouldn't. The notebooks say-"
"Who cares?!" Mervin shouted, "It's a mystery!"
"Notebook say it's deadly," she insisted.
"Why?"
"It doesn't say."
"Well then why don't we open it?!"
Everyone else turned to Mervin, staring at him in silence for a fraction of a second before,
"Nah," Elowen agreed.
"Yeah… I'm good. I don't need mysterious evil," Ashwin agreed, returning to the photos.
Cassandra threw a shrug his way, and Mervin started to grumble.
"Fine!" he spat, turning and marching back up the stairs, "Suit yourselves! I'm going home!"
"M'kay," Cassandra accepted, already buried in the notebooks again, "see ya'!"
Just before they had to leave, Cassandra looked over the last page of the second journal. In ink all it said was 'Continued in 3,' but under the black-light it lit up like christmas with coded messages and comments.
'Beware'
'ignorance is bliss'
'three is in code for a reason'
She zeroed in on a message that looked to be in the code she'd been solving:
'16-22-2 4-12-9-23: 8-6-14-14-22-9-22-13-23-8'
Sure enough, decoded of the numbers and the Atbash cipher, she may have discovered what she was looking for:
'KEY WORD: SUMMERENDS'
And at the bottom of the page:
'EHZDUH WKH EHDVW ZLWK MXVW RQH HBH'
That code could wait, Cassandra decided. She'd be back here, after all.
Ashwin realized that they should be getting home just as she began to look over the third notebook. Sure, the black-light messages were in code in this one, too, but now she had the key. She shut the book, following Ashwin and Elowen up the wooden spiral staircase.
But she would've done well to work through the first paragraph:
'Lbue rfxregge iupc fr gwvcomxvh gr lzy yavv fvcsjlq qzvrgv gx nia-xyshvsfx-fiiczr. Ll oue m giemb kmgyqv: ni yhsjhqp xyi gumlb mnslx Tumfexq Wkea dfv Adqek Yafdw Zadh, rrq zw dchqh klermyb fti rpzrkl-ubagrplskw, vdayxlg rf ts fti frr dfv izxc Qccp Gdxstl.'
Below the last two words was a warning, written in invisible ink:
'CYK ISIH: CXJWYHUP'
Which, had she translated it, would've given her a warning:
KEY WORD: PUREEVIL
3 11-22-15-15-10-21-16-23 11-10-3-12, 3 1-22-15-14-14-25-26 26-15-7-16 10-12-25-25,
2-15-10-22 17-9-11-10 11-9-12-25-18-5 24-3-18-18
7-22-3-10 17-21-23-22-10 14-15-15-12 1-3-11-11-3-16-26-12-3 11-25-25
7-22-25-16 26-25-11-10-21-16-5 1-15-17-25-11 10-15 1-3-18-18?