& brand the ground with storm and song — iv
The expedition parks between the twin crags of the valley, the colossal rock formations directly facing them on either side like the gaping maws of two stone titans. Dipper has always been awed by the valley, by its incredible beauty and grandeur. In some other world, where weirdness lived in the light, Gravity Falls would be talked about the way Mount Rushmore is, or Yellowstone.
Of course, he's also quite taken with other, closer views. A strand of Pacifica's hair flutters upwards and brushes his chin as she sits against him. They, like everyone else, are waiting while Ford consults his spectrometer.
Dipper runs the loose strand through his fingers. "Your hair looks kind of different," he says to her, unable to place exactly how or why.
"It gets lighter when I've been in the sun a lot," she says, "but it's darker than it used to be. Mom said that would happen when I got older."
He looks more closely at her roots and, sure enough, what had once been a platinum blond hue is beginning to look more golden, a warm honey blonde.
"I like it," he says, hoping she can tell he's being honest.
She gives him a smug backwards glance. "I told you it was real."
"Hey, I already apologized for that like a million years ago."
"I still told you so."
He's too content with having her in his arms to start a fight. "Yeah, yeah."
It doesn't take long to confirm Ford's preliminary findings. The Windigo has either retreated to the top of the cliffs or hides somewhere inside them.
Everyone disembarks from the vehicles and gathers up to continue. Ford passes out flashlights; Dipper takes two and hands one to Pacifica. He watches with a knowing smile as she immediately tests it, flicking the switch on and off a few times.
"See, it actually works," he tells her.
"But Dipper, how are we supposed to make out if we don't have to share?" she says with wide and innocent blue eyes.
He knows she's messing with him—he's, like, ninety-nine percent sure. He still can't stop his heart rate from increasing or banish all the tempting images that fill his mind. "Nice try," he forces himself to say.
She gasps with what he is (almost) positive is fake affront. "See if I ever make out with you again," she says, turning away to follow Mabel.
"I'm not falling for it!" he calls after her. "I'm on to you, Pacifica! …Pacifica? Uh, wait, wait up!"
The forest is dark green with rainwater, puddles gathering between roots and where the land dips downwards. The wide silver ribbon of the river is swollen past its banks. With her usual unerring woodsmanship, Wendy leads the party down an old logging trail and then off the beaten path to a small staircase hewn into the rocks of the cliff. It looks very old, worn smooth by time and weather. There's an old caution sign nearby, though it's no longer standing. It lies partially buried in the dirt, a fat caterpillar making its lazy way across the tarnished yellow paint.
"All the kids in town aren't supposed to go up here. So we do, all the time," Wendy explains as they ascend. "You can't beat the view."
Dipper looks out over the woods at the foot of the cliff; the tips of the trees are nearly below him. "Yeah, it's great," he agrees.
"Just wait 'til you get to the top, man," Wendy promises.
She's right. The staircase comes out into a wide, almost flat empty space of rock. It takes Dipper a second to realize what he's seeing.
They are standing in the 'jaws' of the cliff, walking along the floor of the great crevice punched through what had once been a mountain, its back portion blasted into a valley by a careening UFO moving at inconceivable speed. It's a vast cave without walls, the outside world disappearing into a bright blur beyond the dim shadow of the stone roof far overhead.
The wind cuts through the horizontal canyon with an eerie howl, tugging at Dipper's clothes. With the exception of a few large outcroppings (which, he uneasily notes, look like they've fallen from the ceiling), the stone has been eroded almost perfectly smooth from millennia of scouring gusts. His skin crawls as if he were standing in the mouth of some enormous dragon; he feels like the ceiling is about to finally collapse after thirty million years of strain, right when he happens to be beneath it.
"Crazy, right?" Wendy yells over the incessant wind. "You can't really do anything up here on a windy day. For real, though, stay away from the edge. Robbie almost fell off one year trying to light a bottle rocket."
"Check it out, Dipper!" Mabel shouts. He turns around to see her in a superhero pose; she's tied her sweater around her neck so it billows out behind her like wooly pink cape. "I'm flying! Take a pic, quick!"
Pacifica is already on it. "Scrapbook smile, Mabel."
Dipper quietly moves away before the girls decide that he should also be in the scrapbook. Luckily for him, he's a less attractive target for scrapbooking when Candy and Grenda are there and happy to join in. The four girls crowd in for a group selfie, their hair whipping wildly around their smiling faces. The resultant picture probably looks like they're all on a rollercoaster or sticking up out of a limo's sunroof.
"I can't believe I've never been up here before," Dipper says, still marveling at the huge angled cavern.
"That's my bad," Wendy says. "I guess every time we hung out, we were always doing something else."
They follow Wendy deeper into the cliff's interior. The ceiling gets lower and lower until it finally feels like they are in a proper cave, albeit a bizarrely well-lit one. At the very back wall, where the roof of the cave is only a few feet above, a square shaft has been cut into the rock. An old elevator, very much in a state of disrepair, sits rusting behind a broken safety gate. There's a wealth of soda cans crammed into various crevices and gaps, along with cigarette butts and a ratty magazine or two. A wide variety of graffiti is painted and carved on every peeling inch of steel, some of it so old it's no longer legible.
"I think this goes all the way down, but that entrance is caved in," Wendy says. She hops easily over the gate and into the elevator. It rattles a little but doesn't seem to be in danger of budging. "This goes up to the train tunnel. Pro tip: just don't look down."
With that, she grasps the heavy steel lattice of the elevator shaft and quickly disappears up into the darkness.
Ford slings his handheld spectrometer over his shoulder. "After you!" he says jovially, hoisting himself upwards.
Dipper steps forward to climb over the gate but stops when he notices that Pacifica is hanging back. He turns to assess the rest of the party, made aware that this kind of effort isn't mundane to everyone. Mabel, Candy, and Grenda seem enthusiastic to begin the climb, so no problems there (not that he expected any less from Mabel). Pacifica looks uncertain, and Grunkle Stan looks downright unenthused.
"Come on, we'll climb together," Dipper says, offering Pacifica his hand.
Pacifica purses her lips and eyes his hand suspiciously. "You promise you won't fall?"
Dipper is stunned to realize she's worried about him. "Hey, I'm not that accident prone!"
"Please," she says with a dismissive roll of her eyes. She starts to put her hands on the broken gate to lift herself and immediately recoils when she sees how rusty it is. "Ew. Help me over this thing."
Dipper dutifully helps her over the gate and then gives her a boost up to the first section of the shaft where handholds are available (Grenda does the same for Mabel and Candy). Just before Dipper starts his own climb, he turns to where Grunkle Stan is still reluctantly dawdling.
"Grunkle Stan, aren't you coming?" Dipper asks.
Grunkle Stan lets out the mighty sigh of a martyr. "You know, a lot of what you nerds call 'adventure' seems kinda like work."
Despite this, he isn't far behind Dipper.
At the top of the shaft they emerge into a dusty tunnel. To the left, there's the faintest hint of light from around the tunnel's gradual curve. This, Dipper knows, is the way to the trestle that bridges the valley entrance. In the other direction is nothing but total darkness, pierced only by the beams of the group's flashlights.
The tunnel seems intact and is mostly empty. There's considerably less trash strewn about, only a few cans and wrappers, but on the wall by the elevator shaft is an old sign that's covered in carvings, so many that the sign's original text has been erased. Dipper takes a closer look; most of the graffiti consists of names and dates, presumably from the people who made the climb. He even sees a few he recognizes: Cutebiker, 1990. Durland, '03. In the top right-hand corner is 'WENDY C.' There's no date under her name. Instead, there's a series of tally marks totaling six.
Wendy comes up alongside Dipper. "Nice, almost forgot," she says, and scratches another tally with a pocketknife.
They both freeze as a deep rumble shudders through the tunnel.
"Is that normal?" Dipper asks uncertainly.
Wendy appears equally startled. "Pretty sure I'd remember if it was."
"Hey, look at this!" Mabel calls out.
She's pointing her flashlight at the dusty floor; when the rest of the group approach, their combined lights clearly show a path on the ground. It's a collection of footprints, all the same size. They lead off into the darkness.
"We must be on the right track," Ford states as another distant rumble reverberates down the long hall. He's looking at his spectrometer, and in the light from the screen his face floats eerily against the blackness. "Everyone keep close, and keep quiet. Let's not give ourselves away."
They all nod seriously. Grenda picks up a rusted railroad spike that's nearly as long as her forearm; Soos grabs what looks like the haft of a shovel or pick; out of the corner of his eye, Dipper sees Grunkle Stan's brass knuckles glinting in the flashlight beams.
Feeling unarmed, Dipper momentarily considers whether Great-Uncle Ford would help build an energy weapon like the one beneath his trench coat. However, he quickly realizes that even Ford, for all his risky nonchalance, wouldn't give a gun to a thirteen-year-old. Not even one that's almost fourteen.
The air grows even cooler as they press on into the gloom. There's a dampness in the air that was previously absent; drops of water plink to the floor, slipping through invisible cracks in the ceiling, along with the occasional splash when someone steps into a shallow puddle. Dipper thinks they must be beneath the waterfall which plunges into Lake Gravity Falls. The stone is too thick for them to hear it, but some unknown distance below their feet is the cave where McGucket's mechanical Gobblewonker was beached and broken. Before too long, the tunnel dries up again.
"How far does this go?" Dipper whispers to Ford.
"I never explored all the valley's depths. It's a veritable honeycomb: prospectors, speleogenesis, mole people; you name it. And that's not including all the tunnels dug by the natives!" Ford quietly replies. "I believe this tunnel belongs to the largest of the old rail systems. I've seen portions of this same track outside, overgrown even back then."
They walk in silence for another ten or fifteen minutes, the oppressive weight of the mountain above them, the remnants of lives long since lived corroding below. The rumbling continues, sporadic and unpredictable.
They come across a fork in the road. To the right, the tunnel continues its barely perceptible curve, following the valley's precipitous edge. But to the left is a narrower path that doesn't look manmade. It's irregular in shape, asymmetrical, and stalactites stretch down from the roof of its mouth. A distinct sound echoes from within: a distant voice. Just as promising is the dim light shining off the walls.
"Flashlights off," Ford instructs them. They stand for a moment as their eyes adjust, then make their way through the crevice in a single file.
As they go through the narrow passage, the light grows stronger until it begins to hurt Dipper's eyes. They emerge into a cavern, the size of which is startling. It is almost perfectly round and rises into a rough dome. In the center of the ceiling is a large hole through which the light is streaming, opened to the surface. A deep pool of water sits beneath it in a crater with raised, uneven sides; it overflows in several places and the small streams disappear into the furrows they have cut through the floor and walls. Dipper wonders if the cavern was formed by one of the meteor impacts Great-Uncle Ford mentioned.
At the far end of the cave, on the other side of the pool, is a makeshift camp. There are tarps propped up on sticks to form a roof, a hammock hung between two stalagmites, a plywood bench and chair, and multiple skins stretched tight on drying racks. There's a general clutter of detritus everywhere: feathers, empty cans, and bones.
The Windigo is on that side, pacing back and forth like a lion in a cage.