It was dark and quiet, almost peaceful.
"Hey, I've got the fireworks ready!"
"Great, great, just put them outside and we'll set them up later."
Except for the 2 voices that kept talking, standing far off and the people that owned them not even figures in the haze. One of them was familiar, if not a younger version. He could almost see who it was, the white t-shirt maybe imagined, maybe being the only thing that stuck out enough.
"Hey, don't you think that maybe we should be going a bit slower? Ford might have been-"
"Oh, not you too! Look, it was just ONE TIME! It won't happen again, and if you don't want to help then- "
That other voice was almost familiar, very much like the first but... unknown. Something he didn't remember ever hearing in his life. It was weighted from tiredness, maybe loss sleep, with stress and worry grating on its owner. Something he recognized from doing so himself- or at least, Dipper did.
"Calm down! Jeesh! I was just saying- hey, should that be happening?"
"Should what-"
There was the crackle of electricity slicing through the air, vibrating off metal and conducting atop of rather than within wires. Shouts and cries of anger, confusion, the pounding rush of feet and sparking of fire. Red lights blaring across the surface of a suddenly apparent laboratory, and he could see 2 tall figures silhouetted against some kind of machine pouring out a contrasting cold teal light. He tried to call out to the 2 as he saw a bolt heading towards one of the men. He saw how a pair of glasses fall off one of their faces, just about to see what they looked like-
Bright red and white became all he could see, with a booming, amused yet threating voice addressing the 2 as one of them fell,
"PINES TWINS! WHAT A NICE 'SURPRISE'!"
4 jolted upright, shouting, "DON'T TRUST-" before blinking and feeling shaken and confused. He looked around to see that it was just a dream, the clearing they'd crashed in the night before still enclosed by the sturdy trees and tall bushes. Also, that there was a mailbox.
"Whoa, dude, are you okay?" 3 asked with concern, stepping away from the odd structure to help his fellow double to his feet. Still panting and feeling dazed, 4 tried shaking his thoughts clear, nodding a reassuring yes and muttering a thanks before fixing his gaze onto the mailbox. It gave him chills for some reason, just sitting out here in the middle of the woods, without a trace of any building originating nearby for it to belong to. It didn't even have any address on the sides, only the little flag that was lying down. The whole thing looked dejected, abandoned and forgotten, and as 4's instincts were implying, perhaps for good reason.
"3, do you know where threat could've come from?" 4 asked carefully, eyes still scanning over the thing for any dangerous detail he could've missed that was setting him so on-edge.
3 merely shrugged, making sure 4 was steady on his own 2 feet before walking over to it as he responded cheerfully, "Nope! When I woke up just a few minutes ago, it was right next to me, keeping the sunlight off my eyes. I was just touching it when you woke up like that, like you'd had some sort of nightmare." The young boy turned around, now looking his brother's countenance analytically. "You, you were having a bad dream, weren't you?"
At 4's hesitant nod, 3 pushed a little further, "What was it about? It wasn't about me-"
"NO! No nonononononoooo~" he waved his hands deterringly, eyes wide. "Not even close- I would've just been screaming incoherently if it's been about- you know- 'THAT'," 4 let a shudder go across him, the close mention of how they could worse die sending a harsh, cold dread through him like an icy wave. Pulling himself together, he continued to explain.
"It wasn't so much of... well, it felt like I was... almost like seeing a memory-"
Now it was 3's turn to frown. "Huh? What sort of memory are you talking about? Dipper's led a fairly normal life- well, aside from this summer anyways- and it sounded like you were trying to say not to trust someone. Like that phrase from the Journal-"
Both of them stopped, thoughts quieting and making the sounds all around them pronounced and immersive.
"You...Don't have it..."
"I...I didn't think we'd get lost..."
"Dipper didn't make copies..."
"Of it at all...It's still at the Shack..."
The 2 sustained the silence for a few more minutes, 4 finding the grass suddenly comforting and friendly compared to the monsters they could end up facing with no support or guidance now to fall back on. 3 took to fiddling with his hat, trying to think of something else to shift their focus onto aside from the now crushing despair that they were even more guaranteed to die out here now that their greatest resource wasn't even with them. Then he spotted something odd about the mailbox.
"Hey, 4!"
The other boy looked up, brow furrowed in negative contemplation. His expression lightened to one of more lighthearted bewilderment as he witnessed what 3 had wanted him to, and he quickly strode over to try it out for himself.
"Wha- but, this doesn't make any sense! Why won't the flag stay up?" he questioned, watching again as the small little piece of red metal fell right back down unerringly. "An-and why, urgh, is it so hard to- grra!- Put up?!" he managed to get out as he tried forcing it up again, this time with increased resistance. It was like it didn't want to be in an up position. Supplying a groan as it just rushed with exaggerated effect form gravity downwards with a "crreeeak-CLANK!', 4 saw that 3 was looking inside it already and a rush of panic hit him.
"Wait, don't-"
"Dude it's fine! It's just a really, really deep, dark hole. Weird, really." At 4's wary look, 3 waved him over, "Come on, just take a look!"
Taking a peek, 4 gazed in surprise at the inside of the mailbox. Endless darkness as far as you could see inside of it- which wasn't very far at all. It was like the light from outside just STOPPED, like some sort of barrier...
"Hey, maybe we should put something into it!"
As 4 looked on, squinting to try and make something, anything out of the dark, improbable inside of the mailbox they'd found in the middle of these supernatural woods, something stared back.
~Explosions, fire, everything going wrong. How could I have been so blind? HE betrayed me, HE'll betray you too. I can't sleep, I can't sleep, it's almost finished, it only I can just keep away from him a little longer, I'll finally be free of-~
"Gah!" 4 stumbled backwards, breaking out of whatever trance he'd fallen into. It was one of those 2 voices from his dream, and even more mysteriously, the one he had never heard before. The tired, frustrated, determined one, who had seemed to be brushing off some sort of warning. 4 didn't know what any of this meant, but his head sure as heck hurt.
"Oooo~, thisfeelshorrribleahhahahaa," he groaned, using his knuckles to give his forehead a rough, crude form of a massage to ease the sting. So far, at least it seemed to be working a little.
3 looked at him with wide eyes, worry over how he was doing and fright over what had just happened duking it out in his head. Sparing a momentary glance at the mailbox, with its door still open, he gave it an upset frown; before kicking the door up and shut with a diminutive 'bang'.
Turning back to 4, who had sat down so he knelt down as well, he tried the best approach he could think of: talking.
"What happened to you, man? One minute, you're looking inside, the next you're jumping back with this expression on your face like you were about to be run over and were hot-glued to the road! I just touched your shoulder and you just panicked! What's the deal?"
He saw how 4 slowly stopped massaging his head, collected a deep breath, and let out a sigh before answering with an unsure tone of voice he knew by heart from how Dipper had used it before.
"I...I don't know, honestly. I was just looking inside of it, when I suddenly felt like something was- was looking back, right at me. I know it sounds crazy, but then this voice was in my head, talking like how we've always imagined the author of the journals talking when we read those personal entries of his amongst the pages on monster and fauna- but it was different too," 4 looked upwards towards the sky, white puffy clouds not working well enough at being hopeful distractions. He searched for the words, before relating, "It was like the voice had changed- instead of what we would usually imagine, it was the voice from my dream it had this morning."
3 thought that over. "So," he started, "the nightmare you had- and this- seem to be connected, and we don't know how, why, or if they really are at all or if it's just paranoia and bad sleep messing with your head a little." At 4's consideration, then quick nod 'yes', 3 got up with a certainty to his pose. "Well then, I suggest we keep moving, and find someplace preferably with a lot less potentially cursed or haunted items just hanging around ominously to freak us out when we should be enjoying this beautiful day!"
4 just stared at his brother for a moment, a mildly sarcastic barb of a question rolling about on the side of his tongue, when he decided against shooting down 3's good spirits. Besides, it was a pretty good idea, since that hunk of wood and metal wasn't exactly helping his head pound any less harder.
Letting himself smile from the infectious optimism in the air and radiating off his companion's smile, 4 took the offered hand, hoisted himself up, and then asked where 3 thought they should go next. 3 made the good point that, since they were already hopelessly lost, that any random direction would do. So they headed off, unknowingly going north, and with their backs turned, missed how, for a moment the mailbox flickered with a ghostly bluish light. As if activating, the little red flag shooting upwards, before settling back to looking like any old, decrepit thing, the flag slowly sinking back down to the side once more.