When I woke up, the early morning sun had risen and its light was filtering through a large rip in the tent. I untangled myself from the mess that consisted of our sleeping bags, clothes, and Em. I had a nasty bump on the back of my head from when we had collided and I ached all over from being thrown around by the storm. The tent, as I quickly realized, was upside-down and the doors were underneath us. I left it through the rip.

Outside, there seemed no evidence of the storm that had left us here. I couldn't put my finger on it, but these woods seemed different from the ones we had been in. How far had we been carried? The last thing I remembered was something red and rectangular hitting me in the face. Wondering what had happened to it, I returned to the tent. Em was still out cold, so I tried to be quiet. I started organizing our things and putting them back in our overnight bags. All our food I had left hanging from a tree the night before, so that was gone for good. All we had to eat or drink were three water bottles (and one was half empty) and a few of those Quaker chewy granola bars which I had forgotten to take out of my backpack. I got dressed and put all our stuff away except for Em's clothes for the day. As I rolled up her sleeping bag (she had somehow stolen mine) something tumbled out from the folds. Even though I had only seen it for a fraction of a second last night, I knew at once that it was the strange object that had hit me. It was a book. An old, worn, leather-bound thing with a six-fingered hand on the cover. Written the hand in back ink was a neatly drawn number four.

As I opened the book, I saw Em sit up. She groggily asked what happened.

"Well there was that tornado last night... And now we're somewhere in the woods with almost no food."

"Wow," she said, "Well isn't this a party. But, you forget. I can use the gps on my phone and find out where we are." She took out her phone and quickly realized it was dead. I checked mine and it was too. "Maybe it was the storm?" I said.

Feeling lost as ever, we packed our things and somehow managed to get the tent back in its bag. We strapped on our backpacks, tied our shoes, and started walking in the direction of the sun. (It was east)

After a little while of walking, I noticed that Em was clutching a Niall Horan doll. "Where did you even get that?" I asked. She smiled and said proudly, "I rescued my baby from underneath a table at a restaurant. Some directionator probably left him there because she was too young to handle the responsibility of a relationship."

"But it's a doll."

She gave me an annoyed look and walked ahead in a huff.

We seemed to be walking for hours by the time we took a break. "Can I have some water?" Em asked. I handed her a half filled water bottle and reminded her that she didn't get any more after that one. We walked on for what felt like ages until I could tell from the sun that it was mid-afternoon. Something in my backpack had been poking me in the side for a while, and I couldn't take it any longer. I dug through the bag until I discovered that it was that weird book. "What's that?" Em asked. She had seen me aggregately dump my bag on the ground and had come over to see what was up. "It's the thing that hit me out of nowhere last night," I explained, "It's some book."

"Well, come on then, let's see what's inside!" She pulled me onto a fallen log and we sat down. I lifted the front cover carefully because the book looked pretty old. It was surprisingly well preserved, despite tears in its fabric cover. I inspected the spine. The binding was intact and it looked hand sewn. "Are you going to read it or make out with it?" Em asked with a laugh. I stopped examining the book and came back to real life. I just really like books. "Uh, yeah... Sorry." I flipped the next page and found a few pages of notes from the author. I read aloud from it. "It is no longer safe for me here. To safeguard my knowledge for the years to come, I am writing this, the fourth and final installment of my learnings. Dear reader, bewarb everything and anything in Gravity Falls. Caution just might save your life in this town. As I have said before, trust no one and keep book four safe at all costs. I can only hope that the future readers will use its contents for good."

Usually I would think that this kind of thing was a joke or part of the story in the book, but a little doubt sat in the back of my mind. I flipped to the first real page of the book and found a small pouch attached to it. Written in the same neat script, a message above it read, "Open Me".

"This feels vaguely like Alice in Wonderland," Em remarked, "And where is Gravity Falls, exactly?" "I have no idea," I answered, "I've never heard of it either."

I gently lifted the closing flap of the pouch and was suddenly blinded by an intensely bright light. Em and I fell off the log and covered our eyes. The book fell onto the ground and closed. Blinking the spots out of our eyes, we sat up. "What was that...?" I mumbled. Em had her hands over her eyes and she said, "Can I uncover them now?" "Yeah," I answered. All of a sudden, I felt really sick. I could tell Em was feeling it too because she just kind of flopped over and started moaning, "What the heck just happenedddddddd?" I don't know whether I was truly asleep or just hallucinating off of the weird light, but I had the strangest dreams then. There was a house... With so many odd things on it... And inside, there was a museum. There was a man... And something like a secret vending machine door, but I think that part was just nonsense. But there was this little kid with big hair and a girl with a pig... And the words, the words kept repeating themselves... "Protect the books, protect the books, protect the books..."

I came back to reality to find Em poking my face. "God, you sleep like a rock!" she complained while I sat up. "Look at all these dumb faces you made while you were asleep!" She showed me the pictures she had taken with her phone. "It just sort of turned on when I picked it up," she said about the device, "There's no service though." "Where's the book?" I asked as I rubbed my eyes. I still felt weird, but not sick like before. Em pointed at the ground not far away from me. "I left that hell demon drug dealer book right where it fell."

"I'm guessing you had some weird dreams too?"

"Yeah," she said, "I dreamt that there was this house and some old guy and I think there was a pig..." "Me too!" I exclaimed, "We had the same dreams. It's like something out of a movie."

All my life, I've loved fantasy

and sci fi stuff, going to Hogwarts or taking a trip in the TARDIS would be a dream come true. Even though I still like to believe in magic and things like that, I was kind of low on hope for that sort of thing.

Deep in thought, Em and I continued walking. I had put the book away for now because, to be honest, we were a little scared of it.

It had become late afternoon when we heard the familiar noise of a car. We chased the sound and found ourselves on a road. "Finally!" I cried with relief. The fear of not getting out of the forest had been an unspoken presence during our long hike, and it was like a weight off my chest to find signs of civilization. Em and I promptly sat down on the side of the road and breathed out sighs of relief.

We sat there quietly for a while, taking in the situation. We were two teenage girls with no working phones, alone in the woods miles from home. We had probably only made it through the day on shock. Also, I realized suddenly, my hands had been tingling for ages. I wiggled my fingers. They worked fine, but the almost numb sensation continued.

"We should start walking before it gets dark," Em said, pulling me from my thoughts. She has to do that a lot.

We stood up and discovered that we didn't know which way to go. "Where should we-" I started to say. "Let's go this way, it feels right," Em interrupted.

"Why does it just 'feel' right? What if it's just going to bring us farther from people?"

"I don't know.." she sounded kind of distant, "It just feels iright." I decided that there wouldn't be any point in debating it and we started to walk as the sun went down. While we followed the road, I fiddled with my hair. I always do that when I'm nervous. I could tell that Em had also realized that our situation was serious, because she was clutching the Niall doll so tightly I that I was worried she was going to break its plastic neck.

The road was rural and narrow, and it curved through the hills in a meandering sort of way. When we had walked for a little while, the weird feeling I had had escalated to a chill down my spine. I turned around suddenly and saw someone sitting in the road. It was a little girl. And she was transparent. She smiled and started walking toward me with a shuffling gait.

I screamed.

Em ran to me and grabbed my shoulder. I spun around and screamed in her face. "CHILL OUT," she yelled. I stopped and said, "There.. There was a little kid- A DEAD little kid. She was walking towards me!" I looked back at where I'd seen her. She was gone.

Shaking, I fell to my knees. "Hey. I didn't see anything there, Cate," Em told me calmly, "Come on, let's get going. I have a feeling that we aren't far from help." As it turned out, we only had to walk about a half a mile until we saw lights in the distance. We practically ran the whole way there, and stopped suddenly when we saw the building. It was covered in strange artifacts. Outside were a girl and a pig. On the porch stood an older man.

"It's just like the dream," I whispered. Em nodded.

A/N:

Okayy, so I lied. Last chapter I said that I would have Mabel and Dipper come in, and here I only mentioned Mabel offhandedly. The chapter took forever to type, and I lost my iPod twice, so I apologise for the delay!

Also, dearest Roland Castillo, I would like to politely ask you to chill your balls.