Have a great Sunday guys! I'm working all day.

Chapter Twenty-One

"Um, who are you and how do you know about Bill?" Mabel asked. She had to force herself to pry her eyes off of her brother to face Ford.

"We'll talk about that later; right now we need to deal with this," Ford said. "That boy is possessed by a demon named Bill. He's in grave danger."

"Wait, you mean Dipper's not...uh…sensitive?" Stan asked, avoiding the word 'crazy'.

"No!" Mabel exclaimed. "Bill's been haunting his dreams and hurting him inside of them. Whenever he wakes up, the injuries are real!"

"This is serious," Ford said. "Where are my journals?"

"Well, I've got two of them back in the shack, but Dipper's holding the third one in his hand," Stan said. "Good luck trying to pry the thing away from him. He's been obsessed with it since he was twelve years old."

"You let a child get my journal?!" Ford exclaimed.

"You're the author of the journals?" Mabel asked with wide eyes. If only Dipper was able to react. He would probably scream or puke or something.

"That's not important right now; we need to get rid of Bill!" Ford pressed. "We need to get my journals and fix this right now."

"Careful, careful," Bill said from Dipper's body with a sinister grin. "If you do something stupid, I might just do something stupid to this precious boy of yours."

"You wouldn't hurt your vessel," Ford said. "You couldn't hurt your vessel."

"I've been doing it all this time," Bill said. He removed Dipper's sweatshirt to reveal the scars that littered the boy's skin from years of abuse. "I might have to do something drastic this time, though. I don't think another measly little scar in this mess would cause you much turmoil."

"You let my brother go, you evil Dorito!" Mabel exclaimed.

"Did she just call me a Dorito?" Bill asked.

"Grab him!" Stan exclaimed, lunging at the teenager. He wrapped his arms around Bill and kept him restrained while the body kicked and struggled. He couldn't let the dream demon hurt Dipper if he had anything to do with it.

"You can't do anything to me! I am a creature of ultimate power!" Bill exclaimed.

"But right now you're in the body of a teenage boy," Stan said. "A teenage boy who hasn't slept in days."

"Why would Dipper make a deal with Bill?" Mabel asked when they returned to the Shack. Ford and Mabel were keeping an eye on Bill, who was currently tied to a chair in the attic, while Stan fetched the journals. Ford had explained his identity to Mabel by now, but she was more concerned about her brother. Stan could have a secret twin brother all he wanted as long as she got hers back. And Ford had to know what he was doing if he was the author of the journals.

"He could have done it for a number of reasons," Ford answered. "Usually people want money or power when they make a deal with someone as evil as Bill. Perhaps he could have even been searching for knowledge." Ford thought back to his own youth when all he wanted was knowledge. He had risked everything to get it.

"But Dipper's not like that," Mabel said. "He still cries over movies about puppies and broken puzzles. He's never wanted power or money." Dipper had always been physically weaker than the average boy his age, but he knew it, and he never expressed wanting anything to change it. Sometimes he even joked about it. He wouldn't have sold his body and soul to have greater power.

"He said he wanted it to be over," Bill said. "He wanted to die." The demon grinned inside of Dipper's body. Oh, how he loved to play with the Pines family. They were all so foolish and yearned for their desires so much that they would give their own lives for it.

"He wouldn't have wanted that," Mabel argued. "He wanted to stop you. We were talking about getting rid of you and figuring out a way how. We were close; he wouldn't have wanted to die."

"Sorry to tell you that you don't know Pine Tree as much as you think, Shooting Star," Bill said.

"Dipper and I tell each other everything!" Mabel exclaimed.

"Did he tell you about me?" Bill asked. "About how I started his torture when he was twelve years old and didn't stop until last night, when he gave his body to me? How I littered his body with scratches and scars? How I made it appear as though he had attempted suicide in California? Did he tell you all that?"

Mabel stopped. He didn't tell her any of that. Dipper kept everything a secret until the very end, and even when he had admitted Bill's existence, he still didn't give all of the details.

"He didn't tell you about this either," Bill said with a laugh. "You thought he was going to help you get rid of me when he had already given up! He was defeated!"

"Hush, Cipher!" Ford exclaimed. "Mabel, go see where Stanley is with the journals. We need to finish this as quickly as possible."

Mabel kept her gaze away from Dipper's body after he had spoken up. Though, before she walked out of the room, she took one last glace at the demon.

"I'm coming back, Dipper."

As soon as Mabel left the room, Ford directed his glare toward Bill.

"Tell me everything you know."

"Oh, does the great Ford Pines seek more knowledge?" Bill asked, his eyes slitting at the memory of those days when Ford was just a kid that didn't know any better. "Perhaps nostalgia is running through you at your own nephew doing the exact same thing you did."

"I don't want you in my head," Ford said sternly, "but I want you out of his."

"I don't think I can do that for ya, Fordsy," Bill said. "You see; this kid made a deal with me. He's mine."

"He's just a kid," Ford argued. "Haven't you had enough fun with him?" Ford had been a bit confused with how much interest a demon could have in a kid for so long. While he hadn't been there at the time, Bill had said himself that he had been terrorizing Dipper since he was twelve.

"I've had enough fun with him when I said I've had enough fun with him," Bill stated. "It's not really Pine Tree by himself, though. It's all of you playing right into everything."

"What?" Ford asked.

"I take the kid out and start making everyone thinking he's losing his mind," Bill started, "then I make his parents concerned. Fake a couple suicide attempts and it becomes real easy to make the kid start thinking he's insane himself. Hell, I had this whole family thinking he was a Schizophrenic this entire time."

"How could you do something like that?"

"Duh!" Bill exclaimed. "I'm a demon! What did you expect? A party?"

"What can I do to make you let him go?" Ford asked.

"You can…"

D edujdlq.