Beware the Banshee

Chapter 8

From the Journals of Dipper Pines: Wednesday, June 11, about 3:30 a.m.: Funny, but when we started back inside, Mabel suddenly asked, "Russ? Where are you?" We all stopped and realized that he just wasn't with us any longer.

He had gone, just slipped away, and nobody—I mean nobody—among them remembered seeing him go. Hippie or whatever, there's something strange about Russ Renard. I have to ask around town and see who knows him and his family. If I can get a line on where he lives, I may trek out to find him and talk to him about what's going on.

As soon as we were all safely back indoors, I went upstairs, away from all the excited chattering, to call great-uncle Ford. Somehow I didn't want to go into the attic bedroom alone, so I sat on the top step and made the call.

Ford listened and asked a few questions. Then he said, "I hope if the threat is somehow supernatural or magical the wards you set will protect you. They're very powerful and should stand against anything a magical being could throw. Now, understand, Dipper, it's vitally important for everyone to stay inside the Shack. I'll try to drive back as soon as it's daylight. If the animals stop me again, I'll call you. It worries me that something wants us separated."

"We could all come to you," I suggested.

"No, that's no good. First, we'd have no protection to draw on here. I don't think the people who own the Overlook would welcome our surrounding the place with unicorn hair and planting moonstones. This is just a common run-of-the-mill motel, and the owners probably don't even believe in haunts and supernatural threats. Also, if whatever's coming really is something monstrous and evil, I'd rather keep it confined to the valley. Gravity Falls has a way of containing weird things."

He wished us luck, we hung up, and I went downstairs. Everyone except Melody and Little Soos sat at the dining-room table, with Stan drinking from a big steaming mug of warmed-over coffee—nothing seems to keep him from sleeping—and I told them what Ford had advised.

"Oh, man," Wendy groaned, leaning back in her chair. I hadn't noticed before how mussed her hair was from sleeping. It made her somehow really attractive, so I had to concentrate on what she was saying: "Dad's gonna hit the ceiling when I tell him I have to stay over! Well, he hits the ceiling all the time anyway, but I mean he's gonna be mad."

"I'll drive you over an' talk to him," Stan offered. "Him and me are poker buddies."

Then Abuelita spoke up: "No. Is better I go with you to tell him. He listens to a sweet old lady who says you are needed to help with the teething baby."

"Huh," Wendy said, blinking. "Dad really does have a soft spot for babies. But would you lie for me like that, Mrs. Ramirez?"

"Like a chip rug," she said in a cheerful voice.

You know, there's more to Abuelita than I'd thought, too. Nothing is what it seems.

OK, I've put off writing about this because it scares me some and I hate the thought. But here goes.

I have an idea that I'll try tomorrow morning. Like Ford, I want to wait for daylight. This is about the last thing I want to do, but when you're up against it, I guess you have to take risks you wouldn't ordinarily. And since the banshee included Wendy in her—threat? Warning? Whatever it was. Since that's true, I have to do this.

Because if I didn't and something happened to Wendy, I think I would die myself.

A little after seven that morning Ford called Dipper again, interrupting Dipper's morning run. He paused to take the call.

The blockade of animals ("Different individuals this time, I think. At least I didn't recognize any of the rabbits") had showed up again and Ford could not get through, either in or out of the Stanleymobile. A line of cars had been stopped on the Gravity Falls side, too, people on their way to where they worked outside the valley.

One of them was a burly guy in a pickup with a shotgun on a rack, but when he turned around and reached for the firearm, two big bears peeled off from the blockade and stood leaning on either door of his truck, just staring at him. Staring and licking their chops.

One even managed to open the passenger-side door a crack. The bears started . . . humming to themselves. The driver appeared to think things over and put the weapon back. The bear on the passenger side made a disappointed "aw" sound and shoved the door to again.

As for Ford, he turned around and drove slowly back toward Hirschville. As he reported to Dipper, "Pretty soon the pickup and all the other cars caught up to me and I let them all pass. Then I made a U-turn and drove back. When I first saw the spot ahead of me, the road looked clear, but by the time I arrived, the animals were gathering again. I'm back at the motel now."

Wendy and Dipper had slowed to a walk as Dipper took Ford's call. They resumed their run, and Dipper told her what he had said. "Bummer," she commented. "OK, so this morning when we get back, Stan's drivin' Abuelita and me to my house to talk to Dad, and I'll pick up some clothes and junk. I guess I need enough for two more nights, huh? Then this'll be over, one way or the other."

They were running their back-country route, and they had already circled Moon Trap Pond and were heading back home. "Hey, Wendy?" Dipper said. "I'm gonna stay behind when we get to the bonfire clearing, OK?"

"What're you up to?" she asked, suspicion sharp in her voice.

"Nothing! It's just that I gotta do something."

Wendy chuckled. "Man, there's bushes all along the way—"

"Not that. I—I have to go to Bill Cipher's clearing."

"Then I'm definitely comin' with you."

"No, that's not good. I need to talk to him."

Wendy veered to nudge him gently, making him stumble a little. "So talk to him, dork! But like I said last night, dude—I got your back. An' I'm not returnin' it until this is all over!"

Dipper gave in, though he wasn't sure communing with Bill would work with Wendy along. But they turned at the bonfire clearing and then made their way down the little-used trail winding through the scaly-barked Ponderosa pines and the white-trunked aspens to the weedy, treeless spot where, three years ago almost, Bill's stone effigy had landed after he'd been erased from Stan's mind during Weirdmageddon. Now the gray statue, right arm extended, stood atilt and partly buried in the sod. Moss and pale lichens were creeping over it again.

"Stay here," Dipper told Wendy at the very edge of the clearing. "I'll probably look like I'm asleep, but it's cool. OK, just for safety, after I come back, look at the pupils of my eyes. If they're normal, everything's fine. If they're strange in any way—and you'll see it if they are—run. Don't talk to me, don't listen to anything I say, but run as fast as you can. If I follow you, don't have anything to do with me. Get back to the Shack and stay there."

Wendy gave him a sharp look, her eyes green in the morning light. "'Cause you won't be you."

"Yeah," Dipper admitted. "I don't know, Bill and me kinda have a truce, but you can't trust him. Not ever."

"Gotcha." Wendy impulsively hugged him. She breathed hard, then held her breath for a moment. "OK, OK. I'm cool. Do what you have to, Dipper."

Dipper walked to the fallen log—for the first time he realized it had actually plummeted to earth from the airborne, dissolving Fearamid, and it wasn't a log at all, but a huge joist or beam from some building the Fearamid had absorbed. It had straight-cut edges and lay half-buried in the grass. He sat on it, took seven deep breaths, and tried to relax and let his consciousness slip into the Mindscape. It was a lot harder with Wendy nearby.

But after a few moments the world around him stopped producing sounds—he suddenly missed bird song and the constant rat-tat-tatting of the woodpeckers—and turned shades of gray and black, and Dipper knew he had entered the world of dreams and nightmares. "Bill?"

The small voice sounded joyous: "Pine Tree!"

Dipper blinked his eyes—or his thought projection did the equivalent—and he focused on a small floating yellow triangle. "You—you're looking better." He's a lot bigger, nearly the size of an actual nacho chip! With a mental effort, Dipper shrank himself—or his dream-projection of his self—down to Bill's size. Now he could see his old adversary in detail. His bow tie is still in my colors. He still has some of my molecules in his makeup.

"Yeah, kid, I can't get rid of them, they're part of me, big whoop," Bill said. His cane was back, too, and he leaned on it in mid-air, polished his non-existent fingernails on his side, and stared at them casually. "Oh, now you're thinking, 'Wait a minute, I didn't say that, I just thought it!' Gettin' some of my powers back, Pine Tree. Hey, hey, just lookie over there! It's Red! She's lookin' gooooood! So how's that action comin' along, Dipper?"

Dipper felt a surge of the old anger rising in him, but he kept his voice even: "That's private, Bill."

"Ooooh! Any kids on the way?" Bill clutched his cane with both hands, held it against his—well, not cheek, but the side of his apex—and his eye got big and mushy. "Ah, young love! To think that any offspring of yours might have a little teensy tinesy bit of me in him! Oh, oh, oh, if it's a boy, please name him after me, pretty please with a toadstool on top!"

"Nothing like that is happening!" Dipper got a grip on himself and then added, "Bill, concentrate. I need your advice. I've had a warning from a banshee."

Now Bill's eye widened in evident surprise. "Whoa! Pine Tree, that ain't good. You know what a banshee is, right?"

"Of course I do. What I want to know is if you can tell me what threat I'm facing."

"Well, if a banshee announced it, it's likely to be both unavoidable and deadly. And to involve the mystical. And—and—I got nothin', Pine Tree."

"Come on, Bill. I know you better than that."

Bill drooped. "Straight up, I'll tell you, kid: My abilities just ain't what they used to be. Not yet. Hey, hey, now, I can feel you starting to panic. I will keep my word! When I'm strong enough, I will vacate this dimension without harming it in any way, and I won't be back. But that's gonna take a long, long time by human count. Until then, I hang around my avatar here and collect molecules as they come by and slowly grow. But I can't look into the future, not really, and I can only get glimpses of Gravity Falls from the Mindscape here."

"Try to help me! I'm up against it, Bill!"

Instantly, Bill sprouted a beard worthy of a Harry Potter wizard, stooped over as far as a triangle could, and pretending to lean on his cane, said, "Why, by cracky, I recollect a time when I could git inta the dreams of pert' near everybody in th' whole dang world. I could look out'n all them there pictures of me in your world an' see ever'thing. Wish I wuz young an' acute agin!"

Groaning, Dipper said, "Bill, please. Is there anything you can say that might help me?"

Poof! Bill was back to normal. In a sing-song voice, he said, "Sounds to me like somebody's looking for a deeee-al!" He held out his hand. "Shake on it?"

Dipper stared at him coldly. "You know better."

Impossibly, the triangle shrugged without shoulders. "Eh, worth a shot. OK, dang it, our little linky thingy makes me want to help you. It ain't like me, and I'm not used to it, but I'll try my worst. Just a sec. Let me concentrate." With another poof, Bill's top hat became a sort of turban swathed around his peak, and a crystal ball appeared before him.

He let go of his cane, which floated in air beside him, and ran his stick-figure fingers over the shimmering globe as he stared into it. His voice became that of a jovial carnival huckster: "This is an actual, legitimate, imitation replica made in Hong Kong of the same genuine, magic, authentic crystal used by Cleopatra to see the approach of Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony, and so on and so on. Close your eyes, Dipper, to be better in tune with the infinite. We can't do these things without being in tune with the infinite . . .."

"Bill!"

Bill became his normal self. "Geeze and cracklings! Kid, you got no sense of the dramatic. OK, OK, here's what little I get: You've protected the Shack. That's good, and the wards will hold. But whatever is coming will wait it out—you guys can't stay holed up forever. You have to find a way to fight it. Take it by surprise, 'cause it won't expect you to stand up to it. But there's still great danger, and odds are it's gonna take somebody down with it. Now, listen: whatever it is, it's partly of this world and partly from another dimension. Like me, kinda, when I took physical form. That's all I know. Sorry."

Dipper sighed. "Even that much helps. Thanks, Bill. I don't like you, but I truly appreciate your doing this."

Bill looked humbled. "Hey, OK, don't make me weep! It's just so—nobody's ever told me that—I—I'm all choked up." He bounced in air, pointing at Dipper. "Ah-ha-ha-ha! Look at your face! You believed I was gonna cry, just for an instant. Gotcha! Dipper—hey, can I ask a return favor?"

"What?" Dipper asked suspiciously.

This time Bill sounded sincere: "If you get through this, before you go home again at the end of the summer, stop and—say goodbye to me? You didn't last time. Kid, I kinda missed you, I guess. I get sort of lonely."

"If we all get through it, I promise."

"Thanks, kid. Oh, it'd be nice if you could bring a little gold with you. My molecules depend on gold, and even a smidge would help me grow." Bill perked up. "Hey, you remember in your first race, when you had to run that extra time for a longer distance than you expected, and you were runnin' out of steam and got that second wind?"

"Yeah?"

Bill snapped his fingers and winked. "The tiny little part of me that's in you sparked that rally off. Guess it's my competitive nature. Hey, hey, hey now, don't feel guilty about your finish! You didn't actually win, you know—and to be fair, that little part of me's really become a little part of you."

"And vice versa?"

For a moment Dipper didn't think Bill would answer, but then he did, quietly: "Sort of. Yeah. Just my luck, your molecules gave me something I never had before. A conscience, of all the useless things in the multiverse. You're waking up, I can tell. For old time's sake, I'll try to keep an eye on you. Say hi to Red for me, pal."

Dipper opened his eyes, and color and sound flooded back in. He stood up, breathed deeply, and walked over to Wendy. "OK, check my eyes," he said, standing still.

She stared into them. "You're my Big Dipper," she told him with a smile.

He hugged her tightly. "Thanks for having my back, Red." He felt Wendy stiffen at that, and then he pushed away and turned to glare at the effigy. "Damn it, Bill!"