Dipper slept fitfully that evening. Not least as he was sleeping on a mattress with his girlfriend.
His girlfriend who, it turned out, was a clingy sleeper.
It was cold underground. No heat, no genuine lighting - just a strange bioluminescent glow that bounced from the solid metal floor, and the flickering, less than illuminating yellow of the numerous streetlamps that dotted around the Crawlspace's plaza.
He didn't particularly want to move - after all, it'd wake Pacifica up. That was definitely the only reason he insisted on staying uncomfortably close to her. Definitely.
He also wasn't sure if he'd be able to get any sleep in this strange, hollow, rumbling, dripping environment. It just felt too foreign, too harsh and uncaring.
He found himself missing the rustic log cabin in the woods, that sort of careworn, tumbledown aesthetic that smelt of mature pine and oak. The smell of bacon that seemed almost permanently soaked into the building's fabric, along with the distinct aroma of old books and dust…
…Funny. He wondered if Pacifica had felt that way.
He shifted in her arms and bit his lip as his mind raced. He couldn't shake that paranoia. That belief something was going to go wrong. How could he? He knew what Gravity Falls was like and now had two absolutely crazy summers under his belt. He had developed a deep-seated worry about not knowing what was going on. Any time he wasn't investigating things, he was growing more aware of the fact everything could and would go wrong without him, his sister, his girlfriend and his Grunkles.
What could he possibly do?
He slowly worked himself free from Pacifica's arms, cringing at his own lack of tact every time she made a noise or squirmed as he popped his earplugs free.
"Where are you going?" Mabel whispered.
He whispered back with a sharp intonation. "How are you awake?!"
"I'm your twin, Dipper. You know as well as I do that we have secret twin powers!"
"You stayed up playing Perturbed Pigeons?"
"Heh." Mabel snorted goofily. "Yeaaaah…"
"Look, I need- I need to check on something. Okay?"
"Nu-uh, bro-bro. We need to lie low-low. You see that? You see what I just-"
"I got it." Dipper huffed. "Mabel, this is important."
"Everything's important at the moment, Dipper. Maybe not my game, but this, this whole thing? It's soOoo import-"
Dipper clapped his hand over her mouth. "Shh!"
Mabel blinked, nodded, and pulled away. "Where are you going?"
"I need to check on something at Northwest Manor."
She threw off her blanket and grabbed her camera eagerly. "Then I'll come too!"
Dipper smiled. It was hard not to be a little happy that his sister was willing to tag along. The mystery twins were back in action, and as much as he liked Pacifica - like, really, really liked Pacifica - he couldn't help but recognise how personal the stakes were getting.
He didn't want every moment they spent together to be a moment that Pacifica gets reminded how crummy her family is. Not only was it uh - less than romantic, he knew it hurt her. He knew those constant reminders could only ever be painful ones. It just didn't seem right to him.
Yes, she was tough. But god, he was genuinely hoping to spend at least one day before the end of summer just going on a normal date.
The young investigator adjusted the bomber hat on his head as they made for the creaking wooden staircase. While it was fair to say that the "Big Man" had designed the 'new' Crawlspace with modernisation in mind, it had largely been left up to the fantasy creatures to build it. As a result, there was still that pervading otherworldly sense within each structure.
The bannisters and balustrades of the stairs were carved in delicate gothic facades of suffering and human torture. Every hand-carved brick was rough-hewn and wonky. The very place seemed to sway and creak in the motionless air as if it was breathing and pulsating.
The twins hadn't noticed it in the hustle and bustle of the town's makeshift resistance - but now it was impossible to ignore. An almost constant reminder that this wasn't where they were supposed to be.
They opened the Clurichaun-sized doors and made their way outside into the cavernous space of burnished gold and thick Oregon clay, where the atmosphere seemed so still, moist and amphibious that one could mistake it for a giant, metallic swamp.
As soon as they were confident the coast was clear, they slid across the rippled metal floor and ran through the cavern towards the old Northwest Manor, Mabel clutching her grappling hook and a bunch of illegal fireworks she had grabbed 'just in case'. After all, you never knew when you needed to explode somebody's face off.
The journey to the manor was not, all told, a short one. Not for a pair of teenagers with very little legs. It was nearing midnight by the time they finally arrived in the bowels of the manor's gothic basement levels.
"So now what?" Mabel asked as she walked through the cinder block and limestone chambers of Gravity Falls' spookiest hootenanny hut.
"You remember that dream I had with the giant axolotl?"
"The guy who thought he was a God and spoke in rhymes?"
"Yeah."
"I figured you just drank soda too late."
"No, I'm certain there's something in it. He spoke a lot about Northwest Greed. Like it meant something. Like it meant something big. I think this is the finale, Mabel. I think all the bets are off."
"We were betting?" Mabel chirped before being punched in the arm. "Ow! Okay, okay, I get it!"
Dipper grabbed the President's key from his vest and promptly unlocked the giant iron door into the secretive Northwest library. It was, as anyone could guess, a place of rampant excess and expensive wood panelling, kept cool by the earth that packed around it. It was like an archive of inhuman knowledge, catalogued by generations of family insanity, fixation and hatred.
Grimoires. Spellbooks. Necronomicon. Necronomnomnomnomnomicons (apparently some form of extra-dimensional cookbook). Scripts from Ancient Alexandra. Late 1970s furry fanfiction. It was all there, radiating a constant atmosphere of anger, revenge, of festering vengeance against anybody who tried to challenge the Northwest name.
Most obvious was the fact most of it hadn't been touched in years. Decades, even. It was a time capsule, drenched in a gritty glaze of cobwebs, dust and filth.
Whether it was the secret writings of Plato, or the explicit stories of Wolfman Edgelord McRavenway, it was untouched. Hoarded. Kept away from prying eyes or idle hands.
It smelt fiercely of dust. A dank smell of steadily declining binding glue, of elderly paper and leather. The wild mahogany and oak grains rolled and lumbered through every Corduroy-built shelf, giving them a gnarled, otherworldly, crooked appearance. And in a place so still, so static and dim, it gave every shelf a strange illusion of stirring, flexing and swirling. As if the light flickering up its surface brought its very skin to life, making it crawl and writhe in place.
Dipper and Mabel were silent as they took in the sight of the undisturbed library.
It was no secret that Preston was the weak link in the family's chain of supernatural destruction. He had alluded to such when the whole… uh… last thing that happened underneath the Manor took place. He simply wasn't a man with the tenacity, strength or constitution to dabble with the otherworldly.
And yet, to Dipper and Mabel's keen eyes, a clear trail had been led from a single, dust-free nook in one of a hundred bookcases. Luxury tacketed brogue steps, size 11, could be traced from there to the door. Dipper adjusted his bomber hat as he knelt down and rubbed his chin. They were tightly controlled, close-together steps that seemed panicked and uneasy. Like the Northwest patriarch really, really didn't want to be there.
He almost instinctively glanced up at the banners hanging from the ceiling - each one still adorned with Bill Cipher's insignia. He tried not to flinch - simply swallowed hard and looked to his sister. Could it be? He was sure Preston was as scared of Bill Cipher as they were.
Besides, Bill was gone…
Right?
"He- he wouldn't, right?" Mabel stammered. "Even Preston McRichface wouldn't-"
"What do you think the alternative is?"
"I mean, this place is full of so much spooky stuff…m-maybe he's just getting a ghost lawyer. Like - like an old politician, like us, but a ghost one!"
"You really believe that?"
"Dipper, I know you really don't like him." She replied, this time becoming a little more confident in her stance. "He's a maniac, he's egocentric and he's desperate, but he's not dumb. He's not gonna free the guy who swapped around all of his face holes!"
Dipper winced. It was a little hard to think that even a man so close to the edge as Preston Northwest would be willing to do a deal with the guy who made his mouth into an eye socket. "You're probably right."
"I'm literally the most correct person to ever be correct." Mabel beamed. "C'mon, Dip, do you really think Preston would just raise the dead over a court case?!"