The Big Con
Chapter 6: Shadows in Fog
Nothing. There was nothing.
Well, Dipper corrected himself, there's light. A kind of light, but so dim—like the false dawn on a day shrouded in fog. But all he saw were formless masses. It felt like being inside a roiling, simmering cloud—except there was no wind. He wasn't standing, but floating. Or falling. He had no sensation of either, but he couldn't feel the ground beneath his feet. He yelled, "Mabel! Wendy!"
No sound came from his mouth.
He couldn't see his hand inches from his eyes. He tried. He could feel his face, though, with his palm. He flailed around, swinging his arms as far as he could reach. Nothing.
Fighting panic, he tried to retrace his memories: Wendy had hold of Mabel. I grabbed Wendy's boot. Then we tumbled over and over, and I lost my hold. Then we were—here.
Wherever "here" is.
"Ghost?" He tried to yell it, but he couldn't hear the sound of his own words. Maybe the ghost had telepathy. "Hey, ghost, we're trying to help you! Where are you?"
No answer, though the fog became more agitated. Everything was gray, a gray world with dark-gray swatches moving and boiling and dissolving and re-forming. Shapelessness and placelessness. Except for his body, nothingness.
But—he was alive. His pounding heart said he was. He tried to twist himself, to do a somersault, to look behind him, above him, below him. Didn't help. No directions here.
Think! Think! What did the Journals say about this kind of experience?
Nothing that he could remember. But—but there was something—
Grunkle Ford had told him once, when he'd answered maybe four of the six billion questions Dipper had about his grand-uncle's experiences and adventures. What had he said?
"Dipper, the other worlds weren't the toughest part of traveling through dimensions. Sure, they were the most dangerous, but the times I spent lost in between were what threatened my sanity."
The times I spent lost in between.
But Grunkle Ford had found his way back—true, with Grunkle Stan's invaluable help, but still—
I wish I'd asked him how he made his way between worlds!
Wait—was it getting lighter? Yes, ahead—a very dim, very tiny circle of that weird blue ghost-light. Or maybe not tiny, maybe just very distant. It did not move or float. It was a fixed point, the only fixed point, in all the random gray chaos.
I need to get there—
Dipper tried to swim through the gray fog. This is impossible. I can barely swim in water!
He kept his gaze locked on the blue light, hoping it was a portal of some kind, hoping it would lead him home. But—
I won't go without Mabel and Wendy! I won't!
Dipper stopped making an effort to move and hung there, breathing hard. He tried again: "Mabel! Wendy! Where are you?"
This time he heard his shout, but faintly, as if his voice came to him from a mile away, so thin that it was barely there at all. And—something? Did he hear something else? He held his breath, biting his lip in concentration.
"Dipper?" Yes, it was a mosquito-whine of a voice, at the very uttermost rim of hearing—Mabel? Wendy? He couldn't even tell.
"Here!" he yelled so hard that the word scraped his throat raw. It came out tiny, diminished, like a newborn kitten's first faint mew. "You sneeze like a kitten!" wax Sherlock Holmes had taunted him. Dipper balled his fists in frustration.
"Where?" Yes, it was a voice, lagging, as though he were speaking somehow to someone a mile away.
When you see the lightning, count the seconds until you hear the thunder, one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three—and for every five seconds, the lightning is one mile off. When I shouted, it took about five seconds for the response to come back. So we're a mile away. No—half a mile. Time there and then time back.
Dipper wished that could cheer him up. No, it couldn't, because in this gray nothing, a foot was as good as a mile.
"There's a light!" Dipper yelled. "Can you see it?" He hated how faintly his voice sounded in his own ears.
"Dipper? Where's Mabel?"
It was so soft he wasn't sure the sound hadn't come just from his imagination, but it seemed to come from the other side. "Wendy?"
"Dude?"
"Wendy!"
"Guys?"
"Mabel! We're all here! Wherever that is!"
"I can't see you guys!"
"Mabel, are you okay?"
For a few seconds they all babbled. Then Dipper yelled, "Wait, wait! Can you two see that sort of blue whirlpool of light?"
"Got it." That was Wendy.
"It's not a whirlpool, it's a pinwheel!" Mabel. Definitely Mabel.
"I think we're getting closer to it," Dipper yelled. "Or vice-versa. Head toward it if you can."
"Dude, I thought the light was a way out of the world!"
"Yeah, I think we did that one already," Dipper called back. "I'm hoping this is the far side!"
He was feeling himself, patting down his clothes. He'd hung onto the camera—he stuffed it into a pocket of his vest and buttoned it in. His cap—ah, he touched it, floating a few inches above his head. He pulled it firmly on. Definitely lighter now, a world like the inside of a pearl, but he still couldn't see anything, not even his hand.
"I don't like this." Mabel again.
"I'm not having the thrill of a lifetime, either," Dipper called back. Not so hard to yell now, and it didn't have to be at the top of his lungs.
"Dipper, the light's way bigger now, man!"
Yes. If he kept his gaze on it, he could even tell it was growing by the second, as though they were speeding toward it.
Or—vice-versa.
I don't want to crash into it!
"Hey!" came Mabel's shout. "Now it's slowed down."
Did I do that by thinking about it? Okay, little faster.
"I think we're moving again."
Steady, but not real fast.
"I'm almost there! Where are you guys?"
Dipper and Wendy answered at the same moment: "Close to it!" "About to hit it, man!"
It was like the—what, portal?—opened in the Admiral's hallway when the piecemeal ghost had swept its hands in an arc—bigger, though, the size of a house! And now Dipper could see that the edges flashed and crackled with some kind of energy—
Uh-oh.
What had the Admiral said about the experiment aboard the Mistral? A purple fog with bolts of white static electricity? Killed men like an explosion?
"I think we're gonna be sucked through!" Dipper yelled. "Try to ball up and roll when you pass through—we'll probably hit some kind of ground!"
He could feel it now, feel the vacuum of it, urging him onward, like a wind without substance.
Let us survive this! Let Mabel and Wendy be safe!
Now from the corners of his eyes Dipper glimpsed two shadowy forms on his right and his left—one smaller, one taller. Had to be them. Had to—
"Dipper, man, I think I see you now! What is this stuff we're in?"
"I don't think it's anything! Try to stay loose—here we go!"
He had dived off the tallest cliff in the world into a small luminescent pool thousands of feet below. It took forever to fall, but the fall accelerated, and now that the pool surface rippled close he was slamming toward it—
It feels like an electric shock!
—darkness—
—heat—
"Hunh!"
He landed hard, on his shoulder, and rolled three or four times. Hard surface, asphalt or concrete, and it was warm, the air muggy, distant sounds of traffic.
His head was spinning and he couldn't stand up at first. Half-sitting, half-reclining, braced on his left arm, he coughed and said, "Mabel? Wendy?"
"Ohhhh. Every bone in my body is broken! No, wait, my nose is still cute."
"Mabel! Where are you?"
"Here . . . ohhh. Where's Wendy? Wendy?"
"I'm OK, guys. Where'd the light go?"
"I think it's one-way," Dipper said, unsteadily finding his feet. "Wonder where we are?"
"Not in the Porta-Potty again," Mabel said. "It doesn't smell as bad. But it's about as dark!"
A hand brushed Dipper's back. He reached and caught it. "Mabel?"
"No, me. Dip! Man, I thought we were goners!"
"Where are you?"
"Right here, Mabel! Close by. Just follow my voice. Come on. We're standing right here—OUCH! You poked your finger in my eye!"
Mabel was patting his face. "Is this Dipper? You must have been bruised up, bro-wo. You feel all lumpy and weird!"
"It's me, and take your finger out of my nose!"
"Eew! Bro-boogies!"
"I think we're in, like, a parking lot or something," Wendy said. "But it's pitch-dark."
"I don't think we're outside at all," Dipper replied. "There's kind of a faint echo. We might be in a big empty warehouse or something."
"I think there's a crack of light," Mabel said. "Here, grab my hand. Wendy?"
"No, Dipper. I'm holding hands with Wendy with my right."
"Ooh la-la!"
"Mabel!" snapped Dipper and Wendy together.
"Okay, kidding aside, I'll lead you."
They shuffle-stepped, not knowing what they might trip over in the darkness. It felt like a concrete surface, smooth and hard. In a few seconds, Dipper saw it, too, a faint narrow streak of light, vertical. Dim, but light."
They reached a barrier. Metal. "It's like huge sliding doors," Dipper said. "They go up like thirty feet!"
Mabel was huffing and puffing. "I can't—open—them!" She panted for breath and then added, "You think giants live here?"
Dipper pressed his face close to the crack. "There are lights away off. I think we're in a town, but maybe on the outskirts. There ought to be a normal door someplace. Let's feel our way along."
"You dudes go left, I'll take the right," Wendy said.
They did, palms flat against the metal. Dipper and Mabel hit brick or concrete and then a corner and another wall. "Nothing!" Dipper yelled.
"I think this is a door," Wendy called back. "Come and help me."
As fast as they could, Dipper and Mabel shuffled over to her. Dipper bumped into her in the darkness. "Yeah, it's definitely a door," he said, feeling the handle. "But it's locked."
"If only we had some light!"
"Hang on," Dipper said, feeling his pockets. "I've got my cell phone." He found it and thumbed it on. The welcome screen popped into visibility, and then he touched the flashlight app. It gave them a glow sufficient to show that there was a thumb-operated deadbolt nearly a foot above the door handle.
"I got it," Wendy said, reaching to turn it.
Dipper's flesh crawled. Wendy's hand—the hand he'd been holding—
It looked like nothing human.