Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Dipper was four, he’s pretty sure, when it first happened.

A great aunt on mom’s side had died, one no one in his immediate family really knew, but they went to the funeral anyway, because that was the polite thing to do.

He remembered being uncomfortable in a suit that was small even on his tiny body, and Mabel kept tugging at the collar of her own dress, even as their mother batted her hands away. She still insisted on wearing her favorite bright pink slap bands, and apparently it wasn’t a fight worth putting up, because she was still wearing it, kicking her feet on a chair that was too tall for her while the great-aunt’s husband mumbled into a microphone about how much she’d be missed.

And then Dipper, bored and trying to stave off the temptation to nap, looked around the room and paused.

Great Aunt Maggie sat in a small chair in the corner of the room, watching her husband with a detached expression. Her hands moved in time to something Dipper couldn’t see, and he realized what the motion was a second later; she was knitting, or at least trying too. Mabel had picked up the hobby recently, and he had watched her hands with a sort of interest. Great Aunt Maggie’s hands moved the same, but with a practiced ease that suggested far more practice than Mabel had.

“Mommy,” Dipper tugged his mother’s sleeve, unable to tear his eyes away. “Mommy, mommy.”

“What?” His mother leaned down, her voice a whisper. “Do you need to go to the bathroom? I told you to go before you left-”

“Mommy, look,” Dipper pointed, and then remembered that was impolite, dropping his hand. “It’s Great Aunt Maggie.”

“Yes, hon,” his mother said. “She’s in the box next to Great Uncle Luke, we talked about this-”

“No, mommy, she’s right over there.”

His mother looked perplexed, and she twisted to look back to where Dipper was looking.

Great Aunt Maggie was staring at him now, and it sent a shiver down Dipper’s spine.

His mother looked at him, and Dipper realized that he must have made a mistake, because instead of shock and joy on her face, she looked confused and a little worried.

“Dipper,” she said. “There’s no one there.”

Great Aunt Maggie’s gray face stared, and stared, and stared.

It was one of those concrete facts of life, the sort of thing you forget about because you’ve lived with it your whole existence and didn’t know anything different. Gravity was trying to pull you to the center of the earth, sweet things tasted good but made your teeth fall out and your body rebel against you, and Dipper could see dead people.

Once he figured out how to tell who was breathing and who wasn’t, it was obvious. The dead were the color of dust, like an overcast gray on a rarer cloudy day in California. They walked around with wide eyes, if they had them, staring at everything with a sort of paralyzed horror, even if there was nothing in front of them. They mumbled endlessly, usually whispering and groaning to themselves, but sometimes they would shout. Especially if they thought they were being ignored.

Especially if it was Dipper.

The dead didn’t take kindly to being ignored, because talking to them (or at least trying to talk, they were mostly incoherent) made people look at him strangely, and that was the last thing that Dipper wanted. Most of them didn’t realize they were dead, but they knew something was wrong. They knew that everyone in the world except for sometimes one small boy was ignoring them, they knew that they were in pain and drifting moments ago, and were now trapped in whatever strange limbo they found themselves in. They knew they needed something, but they had neither the language or sanity to describe it.

Dipper got used to it, and like a lot of things, stayed quiet about it. Especially to his parents. It was fine; there’s a lot of things he kept to himself. Mom and dad don’t know a lot of things.

Mom and dad didn’t know that sometimes his stomach tied itself into knots for no discernable reason whatsoever. They didn’t know that sometimes his mind would get stuck on a thought like a mouse in a glue trap, thrashing and tearing itself apart with what if, what if, what if until it’s unrecognizable. They didn’t know that sometimes something unknowable would sneak up on him, grabbing his lungs and squeezing until all the air left him and he wheezed like something had broken into shards, unable to be put back together.

Mabel knew (at least she knew some of the less supernatural things) but she always did, because Dipper was certain that there’s no universe where she can’t read him like a book, in a language neither of them were taught but were born knowing. But she didn’t know about the people–she couldn’t see them, and she looked so nervous when he pointed them out.

So he stopped doing it. It was usually fine, anyway. If he looked down and tried not to focus on how his breathing sped up so much he got dizzy, he could get through most encounters with the dead with the thin excuse of needing to go to the bathroom until the soul and the panic passed.

Usually.

He was seven and swinging, so high he was starting to get dizzy as the inertia carried him back down to earth, the chains on the park swing rattling each time.

“I’M GONNA WRAP AROUND!” Mabel squealed, and their father grimaced from where he sat on his park bench.

“Please don’t try,” he said. “I don’t wanna have to drag you to urgent care again.”

Mabel merely giggled, unafraid. She always seemed fearless; Dipper wished he was more like her.

He closed his eyes, only focusing on the April air on his face and the not-entirely-unpleasant feeling of his stomach dropping and rolling with each up and down.

“Dipper!” His father said. “Not so high!”

Dipper opened his eyes to apologize, and then nearly fell off the swing.

A girl, somewhere in her teens, was standing behind his father, staring at him. She was wearing a ragged pink dress, the type Mabel would fantasize about in a teen movie, and her makeup was badly smeared. Her hair stuck out in ten different directions, sticky from hairspray and something darker and congealed.

Dipper stuck his legs out to stop himself, digging them into the mulch, his momentum halting so suddenly that it reverberated through his bones.

His dad chuckled, none the wiser. “You didn’t have to stop, buddy. You just had to not go so high.”

The girl’s face was death-gray, and Dipper saw bruises around her throat in the shape of hands, stark against her skin. “Mom?” The girl asked in a wavering voice. “Mom, please, I’m sorry. I just wanna come home.”

“Dad,” Dipper said. “Dad.”

His dad’s smile shrunk. “Dipper? Buddy, you alright?”

“Please,” the girl said, her voice cracking. “Please, please. I’m sorry, I-I just wanna…” her voice broke entirely now, and blood started to run down from her nose.

“Dipper?” His dad had stood up now, and Mabel was staring at him, openly concerned. “Hey, little man, what’s-”

Dipper turned, and fled into the playground. His dad was calling after him, but he wasn’t listening. None of them could see the girl, crying uselessly for her mother in her prom dress, and they never would. No one else could see these horrible, awful people that seemed to follow him like flies followed garbage, forever tailing him uselessly, like he had any idea what to do to help them.

It was the loneliest feeling in the world.

Mabel found him first, hiding in the corner of the playground behind the tic-tac-toe board, and sat with him. She didn’t say anything, didn’t ask what his deal was, didn’t even smile at him. Just sat beside him, shoulder to shoulder, letting him tremble silently and stare at the ground. It was for the better, probably, he didn’t think he’d be able to tell her even if he wanted to.

They went home early, their trip ending early and sour as rotten fruit. Dipper refused to go back to the park for years, seeing a girl wandering in a ragged pink dress whenever the school bus drove past.

He’s ten in a flash, and Cole from language arts has invited him to sleep over at his house.

It was his first one, to his own slight embarrassment. Mabel had had countless sleepover since their parents deemed her old enough to do so–Mabel attracted people like moths to a flame, and there were weeks in July when it seemed like there was always a gaggle of girls staying in their basement, or Mabel was off at someone else’s house, sleeping bag in hand.

Usually, Dipper didn’t let it get to him. He was fine, he liked being home, and he got to pick the movies whenever Mabel wasn’t there.

But it was weighing on him all the same. Was the wrongness that seemed to pervade his very soul this obvious, that other kids seemed to sense it? Was he this bad at hiding it? He had already nearly mastered the art of looking down and ignoring the strange people lingering in the corners of his vision, never making eye contact with bloody figures or ashen faces, or else they might notice him staring and start talking to him. He swallowed the prey animal's instinct to flee, and it tasted bitter every time.

Dipper did feel sorry for them; it was just that his sympathy only extended as far as it could go without them screaming at him once he began to shrink away, unable to comprehend their pleas and cries for acknowledgement over his own pounding heartbeat, echoing in his ears like rhythmic gunshots.

In any case–he was really good at ignoring it. Good enough where he himself was merely ignored at school instead of being outright picked on. It was easier to be uninteresting than it was to be outright strange, to just blend in under the radar. Going to the bathroom between class breaks to press his face so tightly into his arms that he couldn’t breathe was just another facet in the daily life of Dipper Pines.

Cole sat next to him in language arts, and as such they ended up getting partnered quite often for various projects. Cole was nice; he liked a lot of the same movies Dipper did, they would chatter about video games they wanted or owned, and Cole even had a vague curiosity about Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons, which to Dipper felt the same as holding up a bright neon sign that said “WE SHOULD BE FRIENDS!” completed with sparklers stuck on the end.

As it was, they had to make some poster or other on one of the themes they had discussed while reading A Wrinkle in Time, and halfway through their half-hearted plans to meet at the library to work on it, Cole grinned.

“Hey, you wanna spend the night at my house?” He asked. “We can work on the project, but I also just got a new racing game and I’m sick of playing against no one. Wanna try it out?”

That was all it really took.

It had been a good night thus far; they had pizza for dinner, talked idly about the book before deciding they were sick of it and wanted to play video games instead.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Cole said, twisting his entire body to steer his digital car around a very sharp corner. “But why don’t you, like, talk to anyone?”

“What?” Dipper asked, frowning. His car was struggling to overtake Cole’s. He wasn’t very good at taking sharp turns without crashing, and Cole was using it to his full advantage. “What do you mean?”

“I dunno,” Cole said. “I mean, you’re cool. But you never really hang out with anyone. You don’t really talk. I kinda thought you were a loner because you, I dunno, were super weird or hated everyone or something. No offense.”

“I am super weird,” Dipper said, in a light enough tone that Cole cracked a smile, though he didn’t know how true that was. “I dunno. Mabel usually does more than enough talking for the both of us.”

“Mabel?”

“My sister. You know her. We’re twins so she’s in the same grade-”

“Oh!” Cole snapped his fingers. “Was she the one who accidentally set off a glitter bomb in the gym in second grade?”

“Yeah,” Dipper nodded. “She still calls that her greatest achievement even though it got her grounded for two weeks.”

“Huh,” Cole said. “I guess you two look related. Never would’ve guessed it, though, you two are so different.”

“Yeah, we get that a lot,” Dipper said, though it was really only Mabel’s friends that said that, and while Dipper was pretty sure they said it harmlessly, he could quite be sure.

“But dude, that doesn’t answer my question,” Cole said. “Why don’t you talk to anyone?”

“I guess I just don’t,” he lied.

Cole’s digital car crossed the finish line first, and the screen lit up in congratulatory text. Dipper stood up. “Hey, where’s your bathroom?”

“Down the hall, first door on the right,” Cole said. “Can’t miss it.”

“Thanks,” Dipper said. “Be right back.”

He ducked out, following Cole’s instructions until he found the door, hanging ajar between the hallway and an almost pitch black bathroom. He pushed the door open, flicked on the lights, and screamed.

Or at least tried to. The scream got trapped somewhere between his throat and mouth like a bug tangled in spiderwebs, and all he could do was squeak softly, horrified.

A man was lying in the bathtub, covered in blood, half-naked and wearing a ratty pair of boxers. The water in the tub was stained red, swirling around his body in strange patterns, and the man was wheezing, glassy eyes pointed at the ceiling, half-gone already.

His attention flickered to Dipper, and he let out a horrible, rattling wheeze. “Hey, kid,” he managed to say, lips dry and cracked. “Can you…call someone? Anyone. I-I…I changed my mind about this.”

Dipper thought he might throw up, and another weak squeak wrenched out of his throat. The man blinked slowly, like it was a Herculean effort. “P-please?” He rasped. “I think I…I think I messed up…”

Dipper reeled back, hand over his mouth to prevent anymore terrible sounds from exiting his throat. He stumbled backwards, slamming the door shut as he nearly fell backwards in his attempts to get as far away from the door as possible.

The panic, the need to flee, and the pure and undiluted dread was back, like a drug injected directly into his nervous system. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t shout, couldn’t think anything but run, run, run, get as far away from here as you can-

“Dipper?” Cole’s voice echoed down the hall, and he peeked his head out from his room. “Did you–woah, dude, are you okay?”

“What?” Dipper asked, and his voice was shaking.

“You’re, like, ash colored,” Cole said. “You look like you saw a-”

“I need to go,” Dipper blurted out.

Cole blinked. “What?”

“I gotta…” Dipper swallowed hard. “I gotta go home. I just, um, I just got really nauseous.”

It wasn’t technically a lie; vomit felt like an imminent danger, but it was a weak excuse, and hardly the root cause of the issue. Dipper thought that if he focused, he might be able to hear the sound of raspy breathing from the bathroom. He tried not to focus.

“Oh,” Cole said, and frowned. “Yeah. Sure, whatever man.”

Dipper felt his heart sink. “Really, I really am sick-”

“It’s fine,” Cole shrugged, scowling at the ground. “My mom was the one who told me to invite you anyway, so it's fine.”

“Oh,” Dipper said, abruptly staring at the carpet as well. Beige shag, he wondered if someone ever had to clean blood stains out of it. They would need cold water. He knew that now. “Um. Okay. Cool.”

“Cool,” Cole said, already making his way downstairs. “I’ll tell my mom to call your mom.”

Dipper was silent the entire car ride home, even as his mother tried to push him for what exactly his ailment was. Mabel picked an old sci-fi movie to watch because their parents had already promised her the remote control, and the obvious attempt to try and make Dipper feel better only had the opposite effect. He pretended to be exhausted halfway through the movie so he could retreat to his room, avoiding prying and worried eyes. He didn’t think he could take anyone else looking at him tonight.

When he arrived the next day at school, the shaky friendship between him and Cole had shattered like old glass.

They got a B- on their project.

He was twelve as quickly as it took to change TV channels, sweating through his shirt while his parents drove to a hospital in San Francisco, with Mabel and Dipper in the backseat.

Grandpa Shermie had had what he called a “bump in the road”, but what Grandma Nora called “a cardiac event”.

“I’m fine, really,” he had said over the phone. “Probably coulda walked it off, but you know how Nora is about these kinds of things.”

“It was a heart attack!” Nora protested.

“A minor heart attack, the doctor said so himself. They’re just keeping me to run up my insurance-”

“Shermie, I swear to God-”

“Okay!” Shermie had laughed, and Dipper had felt some relief at the sound of it. “Okay, yeah, just for observation. We’re all good here, really. Healthy as a horse, just gotta cut back on some of those fatty foods or whatever.”

And Dipper had felt intense relief, and then Grandma Nora said: “We’re excited to see you at the hospital this weekend!”

He knew what happened in hospitals. People died. A lot.

This was one of those things he couldn’t get out of. He wanted to see Shermie, quiet the whispering in his head that insisted that Shermie was already long gone, and the next time he saw him he would be a ghoulish shadow of himself that would scream and yell and say terrible things, and no one would be able to see him but Dipper.

But his parents had been snipping and snapping at each other since before the drive even began, and it was only making Dipper’s heartbeat faster. Mabel was staring out the window, staring into the ocean in search of whales–nevermind how unlikely it was–an expert at blocking things out. Dipper had spent most of his life trying to learn that skill, and had come up naught.

Arriving at the hospital felt like arriving at his own execution.

“Are you alright?” Mabel asked him as they were led through the labyrinth of the hospital. “You look like you’re gonna barf like crazy.”

“Don’t say barf,” Dipper said in a tight voice, staring at the ground. If he was looking at the ground he didn’t have to see anything awful.

“Are you doing that thing again?” Mabel whispered. “Where you freak yourself out and start shaking and stuff?”

“No.”

“‘Cause it looks like you’re about to.”

“I’m fine.”

Mabel frowned at his voice, and Dipper felt guilty. Mabel was probably one of the few things keeping him from completely losing it–time and time again, encounter after encounter, she would be at his side, waiting patiently for his mind to stop consuming itself in a panic like a fox gnawing off its own leg to escape a trap. She never asked for anything in return, never pressed a reason, never complained about her self-imposed duty. Those moments when she sat beside him while he tried to remember how to breathe, shoulder to shoulder, were probably the most still she had ever held.

He was about to apologize, but his parents stopped abruptly in front of a door.

“Ah, 203, here we are,” his father said, and Dipper lifted his head to see the door pushed open to reveal Shermie and Nora. No unexpected guests.

Dipper let out a sigh of relief so palpable he could feel the anxiety draining from his limbs. Shermie looked a little pale, but he wasn’t full of tubes and wires. All he had was an O2 clip on his finger, and was fiddling with it when Mabel shrieked in excitement at the sight of him.

“GRANDPA!” Mabel squealed, dashing in the room.

“Mabel!” His mother said. “Remember, we said gentle!”

Mabel seemed to hear her, slowing down and gifting Shermie with a gentle hug. Shermie returned it, beaming broadly. “There’s my favorite girl! How was the drive? See any whales over the bridge?”

“No, maybe next time!” Mabel said, twisting around to hug Nora.

“Hey, Dipper!” Shermie grinned, and Dipper rushed in to give him his own hug. “How’ve you been?”

“Okay,” Dipper said. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“‘Course I am,” Shermie said. “It’ll take way more than some chest pain to take me out.”

“A heart attack, dear,” Nora rolled her eyes fondly. “Good Lord, it’s like pulling teeth with you sometimes. Stan’s no better, but maybe he can at least talk some sense into you.”

“Stan’s coming?” His father sounded surprised.

“Mhm,” Shermie said. “So either he thinks I’m dying, or I actually am dying and no one bothered to tell me.”

“Stop talking about dying,” Dipper’s mother said, and Dipper agreed.

“Yay!” Mabel said. “We get to see Grunkle Stan!”

“Do you know when he’s gonna-” Dipper started, turning to face Nora, and froze with a choked noise.

“Dipper?” His mother asked. “You okay?”

There was a man in the corner of the room, swaying unsteadily on his feet, clad in a hospital gown and nothing else. He stared, wide eyed, but that wasn’t what attracted Dipper’s attention. What was most glaringly wrong with the man was that his lower jaw was entirely gone, dripping blood and exposing his top teeth, his tongue lolling out. The blood fell to the floor with no sound, and it made no puddle, and somehow that only scared Dipper more.

The man tried to say something when Dipper made eye contact with him, but all that came out was a gurgle.

“Dipper?” Mabel asked.

“Um,” Dipper said in a small voice, unable to tear his eyes away from the dead man. He stared back, his eyes blank and glazed. “I-I…I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Dipper!”

It was too late. Dipper half-stumbled, half-sprinted out of the room, down the hallways and as far away from the room as possible. He had no idea where he was going, where he was going to hide, how he was going to explain himself–all he knew was that he had to get as far away from the jawless man as possible.

He sprinted past countless people, realizing more and more to his horror that the doctors, nurses, and patients had a healthy mix of strange folks among them. Those with an unnatural color to their face, those covered in blood, and those who simply looked confused, milling about helplessly through the hospital.

It was too much, and his mind was working double time like there was no tomorrow. There was no plan, no strategy, nothing. Just an animal desperation to get as far away from the ghosts as possible, especially the jawless man. But there was nowhere to go, not now, not ever. There was no corner on the earth untouched by the dead. There was nowhere to hide where they couldn’t follow.

But for all his gasping and panic, he couldn’t keep up the pace very long. An embarrassingly short time later, he half-collapsed into a chair next to a vending machine, curling up as small as he could make himself and yanked the brim of his hat down over his face, feeling his body tremble against his wishes.

This is a place for the dead, his mind cackled. And soon it’ll be a place for Grandpa and Grandma, mom and dad, you, even Mabel-

“Mason?”

Dipper jumped, startled, and jerked his head up.

An old man was standing over him, looking at him with an equally unsure and surprised expression. It had been a while, but Dipper would know that fez anywhere.

“G-Grunkle Stan?” Dipper asked, trying to cover up his stutter with a cough. “What are you doing here?”

“Uh, Shermie had a heart attack? Why else would I be here? I hate hospitals,” Stan said, still staring at Dipper like he had something on his face.

“Right, yeah!” Dipper nodded. “Yeah, um, I don’t like hospitals either. That’s why I’m, um. Out here.”

“...and that’s why you look like you’re gonna pass out?” Stan asked.

“I’m not gonna pass out,” Dipper argued, but then he saw someone dragging themselves through the halls by their hands, too gray-faced to be alive, and he buried his head in his arms.

“You’re about to do something,” Stan said. “What’s with you?”

Dipper swallowed hard. “...I don’t like hospitals,” he finally said, horrified by how quiet his voice was.

There was such a heavy beat of silence that for a moment, Dipper thought that Stan had left. He jumped when Stan shuffled into view, his shoes just visible below the brim of Dipper’s hat.

“...you wanna go back there together?” He asked, sounding incredibly awkward.

Dipper considered it, but then shook his head. “I…” he took a shaking breath. “Not yet.”

“Well,” Stan said, and Dipper heard a chair scraping across the floor. “Shove over a bit, kid, make some room.”

“What?” Dipper glanced up, and saw Stan was sitting in his own chair next to him, arms folded with an impressive old-man frown. “What are you doing?”

“Make sure you don’t run off again and, I don’t know, walk in on a surgery or something,” Stan said. “Seems like it might be traumatizing or whatever.”

That would probably be the least traumatizing thing I’ve seen today, Dipper thought, but instead said: “Don’t you wanna see Shermie?”

“I’ll see him in a minute,” Stan said. “Shermie’s fine, and if he decides to have another heart attack, he’s in the best place to do it. Y’know, I should have one while I’m here, get it out of the way.”

“I don’t think you can choose when to have a heart attack,” Dipper said.

“That’s quitter talk,” Stan reached into his pocket, and pulled out his wallet. “Here, get me something from the vending machine. And uh, I dunno, maybe something for yourself or whatever. And your sister, ‘cause she’s gonna be mad if she doesn’t get anything.”

“You’re giving me money?” Dipper asked suspiciously. He didn’t know Stan well–in fact, the last time he had seen him, he had still been in a booster seat–but he knew that while Stan was nice enough, he wasn’t exactly warm and fuzzy. The best words to describe him would be ‘weird’ and ‘aloof’, like he was already halfway to being one of the departed that only Dipper could see. “Are you feeling alright?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Stan rolled his eyes and shoved a handful of bills into Dipper’s hands. “Hurry up before I change my mind.”

Dipper squinted at it. “This isn’t real money. It has your face on it. What are ‘Stan-bucks’?”

“My own personal currency! Trust me, give it a couple years and it’s gonna be huge,” Stan grinned, and leaned in. “And until it catches on with the rest of the public, vending machines can’t tell the difference between this and a five dollar bill.”

“That’s stealing,” Dipper frowned.

“What are you, a cop?” Stan asked with a huff. “I’ll tell you what’s stealing, three dollars for a candy bar! I’m being robbed here!”

Dipper managed a small smile at Stan’s tirade, hopping off the chair to explore the vending machine options. “Just get me a Pitt Cola,” Stan said, and Dipper obliged, grabbing Chipackerz for himself and Gummy Koalas for Mabel.

“Nice,” Stan said in lieu of ‘thank you’, but that was alright. He popped open the tab and took a sip. “Nothing like clogging up the ol’ arteries a little more. I’m gonna drink this in front of Shermie and gloat. Wanna join me?”

“Um,” Dipper said, looking down at the floor and then up again. Someone with blood running out of their right ear was wandering, but they didn’t seem quite so scary now. They didn’t even seem to notice Dipper was staring. “Y-yeah, sure, okay.”

“They said it was 203, yeah?” Stan said, standing up and wincing when his knees popped. “Ouch. Don’t get old, kid. It’s the pits.”

“Sure,” Dipper said, just glad not to be wandering the hospital alone anymore.

“Dipper!” Mabel rounded a corner, and looked relieved when she saw him. “There you are! You ran off and I lost you, I-GRUNKLE STAN!”

Gone was the gentleness; Mabel cannonballed herself at Stan, and it was a miracle he didn’t fall flat on his back and break every bone in his body. In another world, Mabel could have been a linebacker.

“H-hey, pumpkin,” Stan wheezed. “Can we ease up on the hug a little? I hear my ribs squeaking.”

“Sorry!” Mabel giggled, not at all sorry, but she let go anyway. “You look older.”

“Yeah, that’s how the passage of time works,” Stan said. “Anyway, where’s my dumb brother? I gotta bug him.”

“C’mon!” Mabel grabbed his hand and started leading him back to 203. “Mom, Dad, and Grandma’ll be happy to see you too.”

“Sure,” Stan said, though his agreement sounded more placating than sincere.

Dipper tried very hard not to look in the corner of the room, but he couldn’t help it. The jawless man was staring at him with bloodshot eyes and an equally bloody body, still swaying back and forth like he was about to collapse. He mumbled something once more, tongue twitching and still glistening with saliva under the fluorescent lights, and Dipper felt sick.

“Hey, kid,” Stan stepped directly in front of him, nudging him. Dipper jumped, startled out of his incoming panic. “Give your sister her snack before she explodes.”

“You got me a snack?” Mabel asked, and a grin spread across her face when Dipper handed her the Gummy Koalas. “Awesome! Thanks Dipper!”

“Oh, no, honey, not now,” his mother said. “You’ll ruin your dinner-”

“They can have them,” his father interrupted with an eye roll. “It’s not that late in the afternoon-”

“Yes it is,” his mom said tersely. “And besides, the gummies always get stuck in Mabel’s braces, it’s a disaster and you know that-”

Nora coughed, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Stanford, it’s so nice of you to join us.”

“Right, yeah, wouldn’t miss it,” Stan said quickly. “How’s it feel getting sentenced to a rabbit food diet, Sherm?”

Shermie looked equally relieved to have the tension broken, scoffing at Stan. “Only you would drive twelve hours just to bother me.”

They fell into the type of chatter two people keep up out of niceties; some kinder ribbing, asking how the other had been, commenting on dull things like the weather, but Dipper could see an uncomfortable stiffness in Stan’s spine, like his clothes were just a few sizes too small and he was aching to change. Or maybe to flee. It was hard to tell.

Visiting hours were over before they knew it, and Dipper’s parents herded them out of the hospital to go back to a hotel for the night. They at least managed to look embarrassed about their sniping.

“Good seeing you, Stan,” his father said, and Stan bobbed his head once like a chicken.

“Good seeing you too. Andy, Christine,” he nodded at their parents. “See you soon, Mabel and Mason.”

“Dipper,” Mabel said automatically, and Dipper sort of wished she hadn’t.

Stan blinked. “Huh?”

“Um,” Dipper said, a little embarrassed, but Stan had seen him near tears in a hospital hallway. He could handle a nickname that stuck like glue. “Everyone just kinda calls me Dipper.”

“Ah,” Stan nodded. “I gotcha. Well. Mabel and Dipper, I’ll be seeing you soon.”

Dipper assumed that ‘soon’ meant maybe in the next five years. As it turned out, ‘soon’ meant the following summer.

Dipper jerked awake on the bus abruptly, his eyes focusing just in time to see a sign reading ‘WELCOME TO GRAVITY FALLS!’ that was almost immediately swallowed by thick pine trees.

“Wake up,” Dipper elbowed Mabel, and she startled awake.

“I’m not sleeping!” Mabel said quickly.

“We’re almost there,” Dipper said. “Start grabbing your suitcases. Did you really need to bring every sweater you own?”

“Just because you live out of a plastic bag doesn’t mean I will,” Mabel said.

“I do not,” Dipper protested, twisting to try and snatch his suitcase out from under the seat, pausing when he saw a pair of muddy sneakers a few rows behind them. “I thought we were the only people on the bus.”

Mabel craned her neck up and looked around. “We are.”

A cold sweat immediately broke out on the back of Dipper’s neck, and he managed to swallow a gasp when he saw the sneakers stand up with far too much ease for a rattling bus. He sat straight up, pretending to busy himself with sorting through his suitcase, fiddling with the zippers and trying to look focused as he heard the squish, squish, squish of the approaching spirit.

“Dipper?” Mabel asked, and Dipper heard a frown in her voice. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah!” Dipper said, too forcefully, and wondered how many times he had assured people he was okay when he absolutely wasn’t. The number must be in the thousands by now. “Never better!”

He saw muddy sneakers out of the corner of his eye, and pointedly turned away, still trying desperately to look busy. He could hear them breathing, a slow rattling sound that always set Dipper’s teeth on edge no matter how many times he heard it. He wasn’t sure why they breathed, but it wasn’t like he could do anything to stop it.

In the window, he could vaguely see the reflection of a person standing behind him, swaying slightly with each bump and turn of the bus, like they were trying to keep their balance. He flinched when Mabel touched his arm, and tried to cover it by shifting in his seat. It probably didn’t work.

“Dipper?” She asked, her voice hushed and worried.

Dipper swallowed hard, and forced himself to tear his eyes away from the window. “I’m fine,” he said, refusing to look at the person beside him. “I’m fine. Just got nauseous for a second.”

Mabel said nothing, but Dipper could picture her expression.

Dipper took a shaking breath, trying to keep his head on straight. Terror would get him nowhere. The summer was going to be rough enough; they both knew why they were here. And it was bad enough that they were leaving the comforts of home and all their friends (at least, friends in Mabel’s case) and Dipper was determined not to ruin what was still salvageable of Mabel’s summer by like this.

“I’m fine,” he said again, and tried to believe it.

Finally, the bus came to a halt with a squeal like a dying dog. Dipper heard the extra bus guest grunt, and then squish-squish-squish their way off the bus.

Mabel didn’t race off the bus like Dipper knew she wanted to. She waited for him to grab his suitcase and start lugging it off the bus, into a town that looked, sounded, smelled, and felt so alien it was almost like being on a different planet.

“Oh, good,” Dipper glanced up at a slightly more familiar raspy voice, suddenly face to face with Stan, grinning a salesman's smile. “I was starting to think I’d gone to the wrong stop!”

“Hi, Grunkle Stan,” Mabel said, with less enthusiasm than she had the previous time. Being forced to spend a summer away from everyone you knew tended to drain such enthusiasm, though she was still putting some valiant effort into her smile. Dipper hardly bothered, ducking his head down to hide under the brim of his hat.

If Stan noticed, he did a fantastic job pretending not to.

Dipper could picture him gesturing grandly when he said: “Welcome to Gravity Falls!”

Dipper decided, quickly, it wasn’t that he was wrong about Gravity Falls being the worst, per say, it was just that he was misinformed.

Gravity Falls, in fact, wasn’t a sleepy logging town filled with a few wandering dead and little else. It was a very awake logging town filled with almost everything but the dead.

And not only that, other people could see the things chasing him.

Even as gnomes had tried to knock over their speeding golf cart and kidnap Mabel, Dipper had to swallow a grin because she could see them, and was shrieking along with him. For what felt like the first time in his life, his fear was not only validated, but also shared. Maybe this was why people liked watching scary movies; the community that came with fear felt like a bond forged in iron.

Soos believed him when he said he thought Mabel’s boyfriend was a zombie. Mabel believed him when he said there was more to this town than gnomes. He was pretty sure Wendy believed him when he said he was going to borrow the golf cart to fight gnomes. The only person who didn’t believe him was Stan, and Dipper was so used to people thinking he was weird and crazy that Stan’s occasional scoffing rolled off of him like water from a duck’s back.

That wasn’t even to mention the mysterious journal he had found in the woods, penned with oddities and occurrences beyond Dipper’s wildest dreams. Proof that he wasn’t simply hallucinating to himself and filled with bone-deep dread for no reason, that there was something out there, and while it could help or hurt, it was undeniably real. The vindication was so strong it almost made Dipper dizzy.

And the author himself (or herself, as Mabel protested a few times, because they didn’t really know) felt like a friend that Dipper just hadn’t met yet, spending most of the journal facing the unknown head on with nothing but his wits and a book in hand. There was nothing Dipper wanted more than to be able to do that, than to be able to use his awful skill to do something good, something useful. Here was someone with their own strangeness–an extra finger–and they used it to fuel a legacy.

(Nevermind the legacy was broken now, and that the author spent the final few pages of the journal descending into paranoid ramblings that barely made sense and felt like an ominous warning both of the town itself and Dipper’s own mind)

And best of all, he hadn’t seen a single dead person.

Nothing ever lasted, though.

Cloning himself with a copy machine to spend more time with Wendy was a great idea that had absolutely no downsides, Dipper decided, a few weeks after settling in nicely to Gravity Falls, feeling more grounded than he could ever remember being.

“Okay,” Tyrone said, adjusting his hat. “Knock ‘em dead, number one.”

“Yeah, I gotcha,” Dipper said, darting onto the dance floor. “I’ll keep an eye on time so it’s even!”

The dance was shockingly full. For someone who seemed so averse to loud noises and general merrymaking, Stan knew how to throw one hell of a party, even if it didn’t seem to have a reason to do so. Though, Dipper realized, that wasn’t strictly true; Stan liked money, and charging admission was a good way to make some. At least it seemed to be a success. This would put him in a good mood for weeks.

Dipper paused halfway across the dance floor, suddenly taken aback.

Soos was focused on his rented DJ panel, face screwed up in concentration. Maybe that’s why he didn’t see the teenager behind him. But she was hard to miss.

She looked like the 1980s had gotten sick and thrown up on her. Brightly colored windbreaker and matching leggings, leg warmers, big sneakers. Her sandy hair was up in a wildly curly perm, and her pink glossy lipstick was smeared across her face. Before Dipper could even really acknowledge her, she reached out and messed with something on the panel.

The music changed instantly from a pop tune on the radio to something with trumpets and a shouting man. The teenager squealed in happiness and darted offstage, waving at someone in the crowd; another teeanger, a boy with a denim shirt and denim pants; equally placed in the 1980s.

“Mike!” The teen girl said. “I did it!”

“Okay, dudes, who’s messing with this thing?” Soos said, trying to quickly mess with the board, looking confused. “This is rented, and I really want my deposit back…”

The girl and Mike were dancing almost obnoxiously to the song, glee on their faces. No one else seemed to notice them, and a second later, Dipper realized why. Mike turned, and his face was covered in tiny cuts, glass shards still stuck in some of them. When Perm jumped, Dipper could see the edge of a nasty bruise under her bangs. He’d seen this before; it was likely a car crash.

Dipper’s heart began racing. This was how it always started; soon they would suspect he could see them, and they would become hostile, furious to be ignored. And the dead were so terrifying when they wanted to be. None of them died peacefully, either. Everyone seemed to be covered in blood that had never quite dried, no matter how long they had wandered. The age didn’t matter; if anything, younger ghosts were all the more persistent

Nausea began to build in Dipper’s stomach, and he clenched his fists so tight his nails dug into his palms. He couldn’t ruin the summer for Mabel by hoisting his own problems onto her already, not so soon-

But even as he stared, the duo paid no attention to him, too busy dancing with each other, gracelessly but laughing at the rest of the party’s confusion.

Dead party crashers. That was a first.

It was also a first, Dipper realized, that they were smiling. The dead never smiled. But for all the world it seemed like the duo was having the time of their lives. They were dancing, laughing, singing along to a song that no one but them knew, and if Dipper hadn’t seen their injuries, he probably wouldn’t have even guessed they were dead.

“SOOS!” Dipper jumped before he could stop himself. Stan had poked his head around the corner, scowling. “If I can recognize the song, it’s not hip enough! Change it!”

“Sorry Mr. Pines!” Soos stammered out, and whacked the DJ board. After an ugly scratch noise, the pop song came back on again.

The girl stopped dancing. “Aw, what?! Boo! Boo Stan Pines!” She shouted uselessly after him as he left, looking for a moment like she was going to follow him before Mike grabbed her arm.

“Hey, Angela,” Mike said. “It’s that Pacifica girl who was picking on Stan’s niece.”

Dipper’s head snapped to where Mike was looking, confusion and fear instantly forgotten at the idea of someone picking on Mabel when he was off making clones.

A blonde girl around his age was making her way through the crowd, looking down at everyone from the tip of her nose, even if she was shorter than them. Dipper knew her deal instantly: someone who had been told she was better than everyone else, and fully believed it. Such people were not only found in Gravity Falls.

Dipper was already planning to make a few more clones to carry out an elaborate revenge plot when Mike turned to Angela and said: “Watch this.”

As Pacifica walked by him, Mike stuck his foot out.

Pacifica should have walked right through it, maybe shivered slightly. Dipper had seen people walk through ghosts a hundred times and been none the wiser. But Pacifica tripped ungracefully, her arms windmilling out with a startled expression on her face. Her lackeys froze, apparently short-circuited by the concept that their queen bee was not immune to falling.

Mike and Angela burst out laughing as Dipper’s jaw dropped open.

“Little twerp,” Angela giggled, watching Pacifica try to walk it off with little success. “Yeesh, we weren’t like that at her age, were we?”

Mike shrugged. “Who knows? Not our problem now. Anyways, I have it on good authority that ol’ Archie’s gonna straighten out that whole twisted family tree near the end of the summer.”

“Wanna go see if we can blow up some light bulbs and piss Stan off?” Angela asked.

“Sure,” Mike said with a grin. “Revenge for the terrible music. It’s our birthday present for him.”

It’s Stan’s birthday? Dipper thought, but jumped when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

“Woah, dude!” Wendy grinned at him easily. “Don’t have a heart attack! You manage to get away from the ticket booth?”

“Um,” Dipper said, peering over his shoulder to try and catch a glimpse of Mike and Angela as they disappeared into the hall after Stan. “Um, yeah!”

“You good, man?” Wendy asked. “You look nervous.”

“That’s just my face,” Dipper said, which was true. “Sorry, um. I thought I saw someone.”

“Someone you knew or something?” Wendy asked.

“Something like that,” Dipper said.

“God-!” Stan jumped when the lightswitch he had flipped suddenly shorted out with a spark. He looked like he had wanted to finish his outburst with something a little more PG-13, but only just managed to restrain himself. He scowled.

“That’s the third bulb this week,” Stan said, and glared at Mabel and Dipper, who were busy watching a Ducktective rerun. “Are you two messing with the lights?”

“No,” Mabel said.

“Maybe it was a ghost,” Dipper said before he could stop himself.

“You and your ghosts,” Stan rolled his eyes. “How many times do I gotta tell you there’s nothing supernatural going on in this town? You’re letting your imagination get away from you-”

“Or maybe the fuse box’s just old or something, like you,” Dipper said, frustrated to be blown off once more and maybe a little bitter. “Another year older. Happy birthday.”

Dipper had expected Stan to scowl, snap at him for being nosy. But Stan made a terrified choking sound, and paled as though Dipper had accused him of murder.

“It was your birthday?” Mabel asked, surprised and a little perturbed by Stan’s reaction.

“Who told you that?” Stan demanded, and Dipper leaned away, unnerved by the harshness behind Stan’s voice. “Who told you it was my birthday?!”

“I-I saw it on a calendar-” Dipper started.

“No you didn’t,” Stan said, and Dipper heard the implied liar at the end of his sentence. “No you didn’t, it’s not written down anywhere. Who told you?!”

“No one!” Dipper said, wishing he could run for it, but that would make it very obvious that he had something to hide, and he actually did have enough to hide without Stan unraveling his secrets over something as stupid as a birthday. “No one! Or maybe someone mentioned it? I dunno! I mean, come on, you throw a big party for no reason? It’s not rocket science to make an educated guess.”

The light flickered, and Dipper half-expected a ghoul to appear behind Stan, leering and cackling like it was in a corny horror movie.

But nothing happened. The strange panic drained out of Stan, and he mumbled something about Dipper needing to mind his own business.

“Why didn’t you tell us it was your birthday?” Mabel asked tentatively. “We could’ve gotten you something!”

“I don’t want anything. And anyway, birthdays stop being fun when you turn twenty one,” Stan said blandly, snapping back into his old mood–bored and relaxed–so quickly it was startling.

Mabel frowned, unsatisfied with that conclusion. “Why were you being so weird about it, though?”

“I wasn’t,” Stan said. “And quit it with the ghosts and ghoul talk. You’re only freaking yourself out.”

“I’m not-” Dipper started, but Stan had already stomped out of the room. Dipper huffed, sinking lowering into his chair.

“Do you think it’s a ghost?” Mabel asked, mostly making conversation during commercials.

And Dipper almost told her. It banged against his throat, a confession almost ten years in the making. Because she had never seen a ghost, but she had seen other things. Monsters thought impossible made real right before their eyes. Why wouldn’t she believe him if he was to tell her he had seen the dead since his first funeral?

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Dipper asked.

Mabel’s face split into a metal grin. “I believe you’re a huge dork! Hey-o!”

“Hilarious,” Dipper said, letting the dryness in his voice cover up his disappointment. “You’re hilarious.”

And he let it go.

He saw ghosts around town frequently after that, like someone had opened a bottle and they all flew out now that he finally said the word out loud.

Spirits of all eras and all manners of death wandered the town, far more free-roaming than he was used to. These ghosts were different from the ones Dipper had met before. They seemed more aware of themselves and the world around them, watching people and events around them with a focus befitting a person with a beating heart. They greeted each other, sometimes as friends, and sometimes (to Dipper’s entertainment) as enemies.

(It was funny, frankly, to see the ghost of someone who clearly died during the pioneer era glaring down at someone in a bad superhero Halloween costume. Dipper wished he knew what their beef was)

Maybe it was the town’s weirdness seeping into the ghosts, making them sort-of less weird in a strange reversal. The author had written about ghosts, fairly extensively in fact, but Dipper had found himself confused by his categories. The ghosts Dipper saw were never anything more than visions only he could. He had never seen them display anything like the traits described in the journals. A lot of the ghosts the author talked about didn’t even seem human.

Category Zero, Dipper thought blandly once. Just people. Freaky looking people sometimes, but just people.

These ghosts weren’t nearly so scary. Dipper didn’t have to fight to ignore him; they were already disinterested in him. And for some reason, the relief rapidly turned into intense curiosity.

It was later in June when Dipper suddenly gathered his courage. He and Mabel had been chasing down a man who’s right side had never been seen before, and after an unnerving discovery about his lack of humanness, Mabel had declared she was going to go home and eat Gummy Koalas until she forgot about the whole experience.

“You’re gonna pull off one of your brackets,” Dipper said, walking in step alongside her. “And there’s no orthodontist in Gravity Falls, and Stan’s gonna be mad if he has to drive out of town to get it fixed.”

“Who could stay mad at this adorable face?” Mabel asked, and she probably made an adorable face, but Dipper’s attention had zeroed in on a woman walking across the street, too gray-faced to be living.

She seemed utterly at ease; no confusion, fear, or sadness that was always so present on the ghosts he had seen back home. She looked bored, but not upset. Simply someone going about her day, and she just happened to be dead.

“Hello?” Fingers snapped in front of Dipper’s face, and he blinked. “Earth to Dip-Dot?”

“What?” Dipper shook his head. “Sorry, zoned out.”

“Yeah, no doy,” Mabel said. “I was just saying that Gummy Koalas are great when you have braces because they get stuck in the metal, because it’s like a snack for later.”

“Gross,” Dipper said, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw the ghost turn a corner. “Hey, uh, you go ahead. I gotta run and do something real quick.”

“What?” Mabel looked confused. “What is it?”

“Just, um,” Dipper floundered. “A quick errand.”

Mabel stared at him, and Dipper tried to look as relaxed as possible. The second he started putting effort into it, though, Mabel frowned. “Are you okay?”

“I’m great,” Dipper said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Mabel said nothing for a long moment, staring at him. Dipper wriggled, feeling scrutinized.

“You don’t look great,” Mabel said uneasily.

“Gee, thanks,” Dipper said, itching to run after the ghost before he lost his nerve. “Look, it’s fine, okay? I-I just need to run to the office store, get some more pens, notebooks-” he saw Mabel’s distaste growing, and he leaned into it. “-maybe a new graphing calculator-”

“Blargh! Nerd stuff!” Mabel covered her ears. “Lalala! Not listening! You go do your dork errands, I’ll be eating Gummy Koalas until I throw up!”

“Glad we’ve figured that out,” Dipper said, amused. “Meet you back at the shack?”

“Sure,” Mabel said. “If you’re not back by nightfall I’ll send out a search party in three to five business days.”

“Wouldn’t expect anything less,” Dipper said, and they waved each other off as they went in separate directions. As soon as Mabel rounded the corner, Dipper started sprinting.

He caught a glimpse of the ghost ducking in a small alley off the town square, which was a little strange, but worked in his favor. He nearly tripped turning the corner in the alley, and caught sight of the ghost, about to exit out the other side.

“HEY!” Dipper said, pointing dramatically at the ghost in the alley. “GHOST!”

For a moment, the ghost didn’t turn around, and Dipper worried he had been wrong.

But then she glanced back, and then looked around. “...me?” She asked, voice oddly hoarse.

“Um,” Dipper said, and then nodded vigorously, suddenly having list his nerve to speak.

The ghost blinked, and squinted. “...you’re not dead.”

Dipper shook his head.

“You…” her eyes widened with increasing wonder. “You can see me?”

Dipper nodded.

“I…oh my god!” The ghost laughed, and it sounded like a wheeze. “Oh my god! I’ve never talked to a living person before! Oh my god, I heard about this, but I didn’t think…oh my god!”

Dipper still said nothing. It occurred to him, suddenly, that this was the longest interaction he had ever had with a ghost. And this one wasn’t even shouting at him.

“Sorry, I’m being super rude,” the ghost came towards him, and Dipper forced himself not to flee. She didn't look scary; just ashen. “I’m Josie. Nice to meet you.”

“Um,” Dipper managed to swallow the lump in his throat. “Dipper. Hi.”

“You good?” Josie asked. “You look like you're about to join me on the other side here.”

“Sorry, this is…” Dipper shook his head. “I’ve never talked to a ghost before.”

“Aha,” Josie nodded sagely. “First time seeing a ghost?”

“No,” Dipper said. “I’ve been…I’ve been seeing ghosts forever. This is just…this is just the first time I’ve talked to one. This is…oh my god. I also realized this is the first time I’ve said out loud that…that I can see you guys. I think up until the summer started I was still kinda convinced I was hallucinating everything, all the time.”

Josie looked perplexed. “I…jeez, little fella, that’s heavy.”

“I dunno,” Dipper said, but his chest certainly felt heavy. He felt shaky, like he was unexpectedly giving a speech. “Maybe a little.”

“Not that I’m not, like, super honored and all to be your first ghost you chose to talk to,” Josie said. “But why me? I’m sure you’ve seen the others around town. I’m not super interesting. I mean, I choked on a Chipacker.”

“I…I had some questions,” Dipper said, trying to stop himself from shaking. “I’ve had some questions for a while. About…about ghosts. About how this whole thing works. Look, I’m new in town. I’ve only been here about a month. But the ghosts here are…they’re so different from back home. Back home, they don’t know who they are. They don’t know where they are. I don’t even think a bunch of them know they’re dead. All they know is that everyone’s ignoring them, they don’t know what’s happening, and for a lot of them, their last memory was something terrible happening to them. They don’t…” Dipper trailed off for a moment, and forced himself to take a breath. “They aren’t super friendly if they think I’m ignoring them.”

Josie winced. “Aw, I’m sorry, little fella. That sounds rough.”

“It’s fine,” Dipper said, though it wasn’t. “But…the ghosts here aren’t like that. You guys seem…” he trailed off again, and gestured vaguely.

“Sane?” Josie offered.

“...I guess,” Dipper said weakly.

“I mean,” Josie said. “I can tell you what I know, but I’m no expert.”

“What?” Dipper blinked. “But…but you’re a ghost.”

“So?” Josie said. “You’re alive. Tell me absolutely everything about being alive.”

Dipper frowned, and Josie laughed. Dipper thought he saw the telltale orange of a Chipacker in the back of her throat. “Living, dead, undead–it’s all just a mode of existence, man. I can tell you my experience, and what I’ve been told, but I can’t tell you the secret to life or whatever. I’m just a lady who didn’t know how to give herself the Heimlich. Lame death.”

“Okay, just…” Dipper sighed. “Do you know why…you’re aware?”

“Kinda, yeah,” Josie said. “See, being a ghost can be really lonely. When you die, when you first pop back into awareness…you’re right. The first thing, and really the only thing on your mind is that final moment before what we call here the Big Push. The Big Push isn’t so bad, just kinda like drifting off. But everything leading up to that can suck if you’re not dying in your sleep or whatever. Especially if it was violent. I mean, I choked, and I came back still thinking I was choking even though I wasn’t in pain anymore. That feedback loop can drive someone crazy real fast. Especially if everything else about you–your name, your life, your loved ones–is still hazy.”

“You didn’t remember your name?” Dipper asked.

“For a minute, no,” Josie said. “See, that’s where everyone else comes in. Ghosts can see each other. We can talk to each other. That’s the key, really. Everyone around you keeps you grounded, lets you know that the worst of it is over, helps you remember that you’re more than just that moment of fear and pain looping over and over. It’s nice. It’s a little community.”

“So…” Dipper pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hang on. The key to not going insane is just…talking to people? Making friends?”

“Just like real life!” Josie grinned. “Yeah, it’s a bit more involved, and it takes work to stay like…” she motioned vaguely. “This, and not a hacking, coughing, crying person begging for help from people who can’t see her, but yeah. Friendship and connection saves the day.”

“Huh,” Dipper said, and then paused. An idea, a little desperate and completely out of the blue, began to form in his mind. “Um,” he said, withdrawing the journal from his vest pocket and flipping through it carefully. “This is a little random, sorry. Does…does this look familiar?”

Josie squinted at it, frowning. “Hm. I don’t think so. Well. I dunno. Maybe? Looks old, and like I said, I haven’t been around that long.”

“Are you sure?” Dipper asked. “It was written by someone investigating the weirdness of the town. He wrote a whole section on ghosts! Look!”

Dipper flipped open to the page giving an introduction on ghosts, and Josie leaned in close to get a better look. After a moment, she frowned and shook her head. “Sorry, little fella. Can’t say I’ve seen it. Wish I could help more.”

Dipper sighed, already disappointed. “S’fine. Thanks anyway.”

“It looks right, though, just from what I saw,” Josie said. “About ghosts having a reason to stay behind, that is.”

“Really?” Dipper perked up. “What’s your reason?”

Josie shrugged, and then laughed when Dipper frowned. “Come on! We don’t all have unsolved murders weighing on us. Most of us lived mundane enough lives where our goal was like, self-fulfillment or something stupid and vague like that. The sort of thing that’s hard to figure out. I don’t even really know my reason.”

“So, if you don’t know your reason for sticking around,” Dipper said, frowning even more deeply. “Can you even, um. You know. Move on?”

“Nope,” Josie said.

“Oh,” Dipper said. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Josie said. “Being dead isn’t that bad usually. It’s dying that sucks. But that doesn’t last forever. Just a moment. It passes.”

“You really have no idea who wrote this?” Dipper asked, staring at his reflection in the gold-plated hand.

“None whatsoever,” Josie said. “But, hey, that thing looks pretty old. I bet if you talked to some of the older ghosts, they might be able to help you out.”

Dipper perked up. “Really? They’d talk to me?”

“One thing us ghosts love to do, it’s talk,” Josie said. “They’ll be thrilled there’s a new person to tell stories too. Especially since you’re living. Don’t be shocked if they ask you to do a few favors, though. Not like we can do much for ourselves. Oh! Start with Willy, he hangs around by the dump. He died of a heart attack back in the 1940s, I think. Untied tie, carrying around a briefcase…can’t miss him. He’s big on chatting with the rest of us. He might have an idea of who your writer friend is.”

“Really?” Dipper asked, a smile spreading across his face.

“It’s worth a shot,” Josie said. “And if he doesn’t know, Willy probably knows who does.”

“That’s amazing!” Dipper said. “A-and he won’t freak out on me, yell or anything?”

“Willy’s a little annoying and pedantic,” Josie said. “But perfectly sane. I wouldn’t send you into the woods after the lumberjacks or anything. As long as you stay in town, everyone’s nice.”

That was an ominous thing to say, but Dipper was too busy grinning ear to ear, his mind racing. “That’s awesome! Josie, seriously, this is just the lead I’ve been looking for!”

Josie saluted him with her own grin. “Glad to help in the quest for whatever this is.”

“Oh, uh, I almost forgot to ask,” Dipper said. “Who was the first ghost?”

“The first ghost?”

“The first ghost who helped the other ghost not go crazy,” Dipper said. “Who kept them from going crazy?”

“No one,” Josie said. “There was another living person who could see us. They talked to us, brought a bunch of us back from insanity.”

Dipper’s breath caught in his throat.

Josie grinned. “What, you’re surprised that another person in this town can see ghosts? Come on, man. There’s gnomes in the forest. Of course there’s a medium running around.”

“Who is it?” Dipper asked, almost in a whisper.

Josie shrugged. “I dunno. No one’s spoken to ‘em for a long time now. I didn't die all that long ago.”

“Would Willy know?” Dipper asked.

Josie shrugged again. “Maybe.”

“Okay,” Dipper said, an even bigger smile spreading across his face. “I…I’m not the only one, then? I’m not…I’m not a freak? Someone else can see you all too?”

“I-” Josie frowned. “Well, yeah, but Dipper, maybe you shouldn’t-”

“Thanks, Josie!” Dipper said, shoving the journal back into his jacket, already starting to run off. “Sorry that you died!”

“Don’t be!” Josie said. “It happens to everyone!”

It took a little longer than Dipper would have wanted to find an excuse to slip out alone and make his way to the dump. Stan always had more chores for him, there was always another monster to chase, and it was harder than he thought it would have been to shake Mabel.

But he did make his way there, and when he didn’t see any businessmen lingering on the outskirts of the dump, he took a deep breath, and ventured inside.

It occurred to him that this was never something he would have done at the beginning of the summer.

“Hello?” Dipper called out hesitantly. “Willy? I-Is there someone named Willy here? Josie sent me!”

Dipper rounded the corner, and paused.

A gray-faced man was staring at him, clutching a briefcase, a navy blue tie hanging loose around his neck. Dipper swallowed, and waved. “Um. Hi. You’re…you’re Willy, right?”

“You can see me?” Willy asked, looking flabbergasted.

“Uh,” Dipper said, and wondered if he would have to go through this with every ghost he spoke to. “Yeah, man. Hi. I’m Dipper.”

Willy grinned. “Capital to meet you, my good man! I’m William James Loman, but call me Willy! Everyone does!”

“Sure,” Dipper said. “Listen, I-”

“What can I do for you, sport?” Willy asked. “By God, it’s been so long since I’ve spoken to a living person! In fact, I thought he was the only one!”

“You spoke to a living person before me?” Dipper asked, forgoing questions about the journal for just a moment.

“Why, yes!” Willy nodded. “Suppose it makes sense, a gift such as your’s is extremely uncommon, but uncommon things seem to just thrive in this town, don’t they?”

“Right, yeah, gnomes in the forest and all,” Dipper said. “Do you, um, know who it is?”

“Ah,” Willy’s smile wilted a bit. “Hm. Uh. Well. Seems I’ve forgotten the fellow’s name.”

“What?!”

“Well, in my defense,” Willy said. “I was lost in my own mind for quite some time. Then this inquisitive man pulls me out of it! Very kind of him. Didn’t even really ask for anything in return. Just had a few questions, though don’t ask what they were, I can’t recall. See, after we spirits become lost, it can…it can stick with us. That much pain and fear swirling around tends to hang about, clouding memories even if we don’t mean it to. My mind’s mostly where it was, but…some things slip away. Especially seeing as I haven’t spoken to him in such a long, long time.”

“Don’t suppose you know what this is either, then,” Dipper said glumly, pulling the journal out and showing it to Willy.

Willy squinted at it. “...I think that’s supposed to have a one. Not a three.”

Dipper’s heart skipped a few beats. “W-what?”

“Yes, you know,” Willy nodded slowly. “That does look quite familiar. I think…I remember a man, standing before me. He…he had a journal much like that tucked under his arm. He was asking me so many questions, but I…why, I was still half-mad. I couldn’t answer them.”

“You don’t…” Dipper swallowed. “You really don’t remember anything?”

Willy shook his head. “Just a shadow of a face, I’m afraid.”

“But…” Dipper said, feeling vaguely light-headed from excitement. “If…if he had the journal, that means…oh my god. Oh my god. The author! He was the other one who could see ghosts!”

Dipper started pacing before he could stop himself, ignoring the confused looks from Willy. “It makes perfect sense! Of course he could see ghosts! That’s why he was able to gather so much data on them! He must have outlined his daily ghost interactions in the first journal! That must be what he was asking you!”

“Now that you mention it,” Willy said slowly. “I do believe his questions had a clinical edge to them. Scientific, you could say. Couldn’t make heads or tails of ‘em, he got frustrated with me real quick.”

“This is incredible!” Dipper laughed, high-pitched and relieved. “Oh my god! I-I’m not the only one! A genius, an actual genius, can see you guys too! This is incredible!”

“Talkin’ to the air?”

Dipper shrieked, stumbling away from Old Man McGucket, who had just about materialized next to Dipper, grinning and blank-eyed. “I do the same all the time! Howdy, air!” McGucket waved at Willy mindlessly, who waved back.

Gravity Falls, Dipper had learned, was filled with unique characters, but very few could hold a candle to the hillbilly that had somehow wandered out of Cumberland and into the far reaches of the Pacific Northwest. For a moment, when he first met him, Dipper had thought he was dead–only the dead wailed and pleaded for attention like that with so little awareness–but everyone else reacted to him like they knew exactly who he was, and was little more than a nuisance.

“Why, hello, Mr. McGucket,” Willy said pleasantly. “How are you today?”

McGucket didn’t respond, turning back to Dipper with a grin. “Glad to see another fan of air-talkin’!”

“Oh my god,” Dipper wheezed, clutching his chest.

Willy chuckled. “He won’t hurt you. He’s harmless.”

“Sure, he seemed harmless when he was chasing us with a robot lake monster,” Dipper grumbled, standing back up.

Willy frowned. “That…does sound like him, yes. I apologize on behalf of him.”

“Don’t bother,” Dipper said, and McGucket just stared at him, smiling with annoying docility. A fly buzzed around his head, and he made no move to shoo it away. “He’s bananas.”

“Be kind to him,” Willy said, his voice suddenly sharp.

“Well!” McGucket screeched, giving no indication that he was aware of any conversation happening around him. “Oughta get home to the missus! She gets re-ea-ea-eal cranky when I’m late, and I don’t want more rabies shots!”

“What-” Dipper started, but McGucket had already scampered off, almost animal-like.

Dipper glanced at Willy sideways. “Why are you talking to him? He can’t see you.”

“I should think he would like the company regardless, though,” Willy said. “It’s hard not to feel sympathetic. He’s not unlike how I was prior to regaining myself. I know what it is to be ignored. I know what it is to feel left behind. He doesn’t even have the benefit of knowing people simply can’t perceive him. He’s been ignored on purpose.”

“What?” Dipper blinked. “Why…why is he like that?”

“I’ve not the foggiest idea,” Willy said. “But he has…moments, sometimes. Of semi-clarity. He looks for his son. He calls for someone.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know,” Willy said sadly. “He doesn’t remember their name.”

Dipper frowned, trying to match Willy’s picture of McGucket with the picture he had–a crazed old man hellbent on causing destruction and chaos everywhere he went, even by accident.

“You don’t have to be dead to be a ghost,” Willy said softly, half to himself. “And someone doesn’t have to be buried to haunt you, either.”

“Hey, less yappin’, more sweepin’,” Stan grumbled, shooing Dipper away from the cash register where he had been having a spirited discussion with Wendy about a TV show she liked and Dipper was pretending to like.

Dipper scowled, clutching an ancient broom tightly. “I was sweeping!”

“Yeah?” Stan raised an eyebrow. “‘Cause it looked to me like you were too busy making goo-goo eyes-”

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT,” Dipper said, probably too loudly, because a baby in a stroller nearby burst into tears. The mother glared, and stalked out of the gift shop without buying anything.

Stan scowled at Dipper. “That’s coming out of your paycheck.”

“I don’t get a paycheck!” Dipper protested.

“I’m taking it out of your imaginary paycheck,” Stan amended. “You know, I was just thinking about starting to pay you.”

“No you weren’t,” Dipper grumbled.

“I wasn’t,” Stan agreed. “But I definitely won’t now.”

Dipper mumbled to himself, mostly just nonsense, but Stan’s head snapped back to him. “If you got something to say, you might as well say it.”

Dipper dipped his head down towards the ground, letting the brim of his hat conceal Stan’s face. He heard Stan sigh. “You’re gonna give yourself an ulcer with how much you choke down, kid.”

Dipper scowled, turning away. “What do you know?”

“More than you think,” Stan said.

Dipper went quiet again, biting his tongue to keep a venomous remark at bay. He swept vaguely at the floor, mostly just pushing dust around. When he turned, he was surprised to find Stan’s shoes still in view.

“You’re still here?” Dipper asked before he could stop himself.

“Don’t have anywhere better to be,” Stan said. “What, you want Chipackerz from the vending machine again or something?”

Dipper thought of Josie and the wad of orange permanently stuck in the back of her throat and shook his head. “That was forever ago. I’m not a little kid.”

“That was only a handful of months ago,” Stan said, and then, in a strangely careful voice: “You ever gonna tell me why you were so upset-”

“I was upset because Grandpa Shermie was in the hospital,” Dipper snapped, jerking his head up to glare at Stan. “And right now, I’m upset that since he had a heart attack we can’t be with him and Grandma Nora in San Francisco while mom and dad get a divorce or whatever.”

Stan blinked, looking surprised. “That’s not-”

“I’m not stupid,” Dipper snapped. “We’re not here to get fresh air. We’re just here so they can figure out custody stuff and scream at each other without worrying that we’re gonna hear. Look, you don’t want us here, and we didn’t really wanna be here, but we’re here now, so why don’t we just call a truce and make the best of it?”

“That’s not-” Stan sputtered. “Kid-”

“Save it,” Dipper said, his voice edging on a snap. “You only want us here because child labor laws don’t count if it’s family.”

Stan laughed, humorless and harsh. “You got it all figured out, huh?”

“I see a lot,” Dipper said, turning away to uselessly poke at a dust bunny. “I know more about this town than you do-”

He stumbled around someone as they stepped out behind the t-shirt stand, and was about to mumble an insincere apology when he froze.

The man he had nearly run into was ashen, far too colorless to be alive. But beyond that, his right eye was bright red, leaking fluid and blood down his cheek slowly. He was walking unsteadily, the right side of his face drooping horrifically. He regarded Dipper with some interest, and Dipper felt his throat close up.

Dipper forgot that ghosts could still be scary.

“Um,” Dipper said, realizing he was never going to get used to unexpectedly running into a corpse. “Um.”

Someone snatched the broom out of his hand, and Stan moved in front of him, blocking his view of the corpse to better glare at him. “If you’re just gonna putter around and mope,” he growled. “At least go do it somewhere else.”

Dipper blinked, startled out of an incoming spiral by Stan. “What? Are you…are you letting me off early?”

“You’re chasing off my customers!” Stan shook the broom, and Dipper caught a glimpse of the ghost behind him, watching them with a vague interest. “Go find your sister and run around in the woods until dinner or something, I dunno what you do out there all day.”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Dipper muttered.

“Sure, whatever,” Stan rolled his eyes, and Dipper’s jaw clenched. “Now scram. I gotta enough on my plate without you giving me the evil eye.”

“It’s just not fair!” Dipper told Josie, pacing up and down the alleyway. “Why does he keep dismissing me?! He can’t possibly be that dumb to ignore all the weird stuff that happens in this town! No one can be!”

Josie shrugged, sitting on the ground. “I dunno. I don’t remember too much weird stuff from when I was alive, to be honest. Maybe it’s just one of those things you notice more in hindsight.”

“So I have to wait for him to die to believe me?” Dipper asked bitterly.

“That’s a little dark, don’t you think?” Josie asked.

“Maybe,” Dipper sighed, sitting down across from Josie. “It’s just frustrating.”

“At least you have your sister,” Josie said. “From what you’ve told me, seems like you two are kicking butt in this town.”

Dipper had accidentally made a habit of visiting Josie whenever he had a moment alone. Besides Mabel, she probably knew as much about the author as Dipper did. Which was to say, she was also at a complete loss at his identity, though she agreed it seemed likely that he was the one talking to ghosts.

And besides investigation, it was nice to have a person to complain to that wasn’t Mabel, especially since she had a habit of defending Stan’s gruffer side. Dipper was highly suspicious that he liked Mabel a lot more than him. Soos was apt to defend Stan too, and he couldn’t go to Wendy without feeling like a whiny little kid. So Josie it was.

“I guess,” Dipper shrugged. “I dunno. It just feels like we’re hitting dead end after dead end. None of the ghosts you’ve sent me after to talk to know who the author is, and most of them are positive they never talked to a living person.”

“Besides you,” Josie corrected. “You’re a medium too.”

“Ugh,” Dipper frowned. “I don’t like being called a medium. It sounds so…unprofessional.”

Josie snorted. “Oh, sorry, what do your business cards say?”

“They say ghost wrangler,” Dipper said, and then coughed. “I-if I had any. Which I don’t, because that’s silly-”

“Ah ah ah,” Josie grinned, leaning forward with a mischievous glint in her eye that reminded him of Mabel. “Seems like you’ve put some thought into this. Maybe even enough thought to actually make them.”

Dipper crossed his arms, and Josie laughed again. “Come on! You can’t just leave me hanging like that! Show me, show me, show me!”

“Fine! But only because I know you’ll literally haunt me otherwise,” Dipper huffed, reaching into his bag for a separate notebook, the one he was using to record his ghost interactions. He had been recording most of the supernatural shenanigans he had gotten into in the blank pages of the journal, but the ghost felt more personal, somehow. Something he wanted to keep for himself, at least for now. All the ghosts he had spoken with were recorded with their name, a description alongside a sketch, how they died, and if they were any potential help in his search for the author.

He flipped open to a page that was mostly blank, except for an outline for a business card that he had drawn a few days ago, during a more self-indulgent mood.

Josie’s eyes flickered over his writing, and her smile grew. “Mason ‘Post-Mortem’ Pines?” She asked with a grin.

“People remember alliteration,” Dipper mumbled. “It makes me more memorable.”

“Oh, this is golden,” Josie cackled. “Wait ‘til the others get a load of this.”

Dipper’s head jerked up. “Others?”

“Yeah!” Josie nodded. “You’re kinda becoming a celebrity, little fella. Word travels fast among us spirits. Everyone knows about the little medium.”

Dipper frowned. “I said I didn’t like medium-”

“Hey,” Josie snapped her fingers. “If the cops put out an APB on you, would they say you’re a small medium at large?”

“Wow,” Dipper said dryly. “It’s such a shame you didn’t go into comedy.”

“Aw, you’re gonna kill me again over here,” Josie said. “But seriously, this is a good thing. News about you looking for another guy who can see us is spreading. The more that we talk about it, the more likely we are to come up with something to help you out. Plus, you don’t have to explain who you are each time and field a buncha questions.”

“That…that’s good, really good,” Dipper nodded slowly. “Um, do you think maybe you could spread the word not to come to the shack? And not to come up to me randomly when I’m with other people. I’m only not-weird here because everyone else is weirder by proxy. I’d kinda like to keep it that way. It’s hard to ignore you guys sometimes.”

“Duly noted,” Josie saluted lazily.

“Aw, rats,” Dipper said, spotting his own long shadow stretching across the concrete. “It’s getting dark. I should probably head home before Mabel gets worried and Stan gets mad at me.”

“I remember a little bit about Stan from when I was alive,” Josie said thoughtfully. “Sometimes he had discounts for locals, to draw us back in when tourist season was slow. He was…he always seemed weird, but he was nice enough, I guess.”

Dipper snorted. “Clearly,” he said. “You didn’t know Stan at all if you thought he was nice.”

And it really shouldn’t have been a shock, not with everything he had seen, that there were more than ghosts lurking in the periphery of his vision, just out of sight and waiting to make itself known.

Though in fairness to himself, no one in a million years could have predicted a demon in the shape of a triangle with a top hat, tap dancing merrily like Shiva dancing on the ruins of the world.

And Stan might not have been nice, but he probably didn’t deserve to have his mind rooted through by such a bizarre creature. And if he did deserve it, then Soos still deserved to stay employed at the shack, which would be very difficult if the demon found the code to the safe that held the deed to the house and handed it over to Gideon.

(It all felt a bit absurd, but absurd was the bread and butter of Gravity Falls)

“We gotta find that memory before Bill does!” Mabel said, and started throwing open memory doors at random. “Hurry!”

“Great,” Dipper said. “Another thing we do that he won’t believe.”

“No time for sarcastic commentary, Dipper!” Mabel said, which in fairness, was probably true. “Go go go!”

Dipper grumbled something unknown even to himself, stalking off through Stan’s Mindscape, still annoyed about the hole Bill Cipher had literally blown through him. It reminded him too much of a rather gorey ghost he had seen at a gas station a few years ago.

He opened and closed doors without much interest, each memory only cementing a foul image of Stanford Pines. Stan hiding money, fake and real, between his bed frame and mattress. Stan stuffing his pockets with junk he probably didn’t even need and making a beeline for the exit of the store. Stan glaring at Dipper, yanking a broom out of his hand, and even in the memory Dipper saw the shadow of a specter looming over him while Stan chewed him out.

This is stupid, Dipper thought, reaching for a particularly worn looking door, oddly scorched. We have a one in a million chance of finding this, and a far higher chance of seeing something we don’t want to see-

Dipper wrenched the door open, and paused.

A little boy, maybe a few years younger than Dipper, was studying a deck of cards with such concentration Dipper wouldn’t have been surprised if they burst into flames. He was sitting in a blanket fort of some kind, and in front of him sat a privacy screen like the ones Dipper had seen used in Dungeons, Dungeons, & More Dungeons. A head of dark hair just barely peeked over the screen, likely studying their own cards.

“Got any kings?” The boy asked.

“Nope,” the hidden child said. “Go fish.”

“Stan,” Dipper said, his voice barely a whisper.

Stan as a child was so surreal that Dipper almost closed the door. Dipper knew, logically, that Stan had been a kid once, but he couldn’t imagine anything other than the scowling old man.

But the little boy had Stan’s nose, and the frown on his face as he reached for a new card from the deck couldn’t have come from anyone except his great-uncle.

“This is stupid,” little Stan muttered. “I didn’t even break the window. Crampelter did and no one believes me, and now I’m grounded and Pa’s angry with me again.”

“I know,” said the hidden boy, probably a friend. “Sorry.”

“No one believes me about anything,” Stan muttered. “It’s not fair.”

“I know,” said the boy. “I’m sorry.”

Stan was quiet for a moment.

“Any threes?” The other boy asked.

“Does it get easier, you think?” Stan asked suddenly. “Being a kid?”

“...I don’t know,” the boy said.

“It’s just awful,” Stan said quietly, shuffling his cards. “Feeling like this all the time. Scared. Helpless. Out of control. Sometimes…” he trailed off for a moment, and then seemed to gather his courage to speak. “Sometimes it feels like my stupid brain will think of something, something so awful, like…like what if we all burn up in our beds tonight? Or what if a riptide gets us and we drown? Or…or I see or do something so awful it ruins everything forever and ever.”

The other boy said nothing, and Stan hunched down, closely studying his cards. A three, a jack, and a faded king. Stan flipped the card in his hand over; an ace of clubs. “...I’m so tired of being scared all the time,” Stan whispered. “I’m so tired of being crazy.”

“You’re not crazy.”

“Sure,” Stan sounded unconvinced. “It’s not fair.”

“You’re right, none of this is fair. Not to you, me, or anyone,” the boy said. “And I know you’re scared. But you’re a lot braver than you give yourself credit for. Especially when it comes to the people you care about. I’ve seen it. Remember the Jersey Devil?”

Dipper blinked, wondering what in the world that meant (perhaps a code name of some kind), but Stan laughed.

“Maybe,” Stan said. “Doesn’t feel like it, though.”

“You never acknowledge your good traits,” the boy said. “It’s very annoying.”

“Oh, you don’t wanna talk about things that are annoying,” Stan said with a grin. “Or we’ll be here all day talking about you.”

“Still,” the boy said. “I think you’re brave. And even if you are scared–that’s not gonna stop you. Never did before.”

“...guess not,” Stan said. “No threes, by the way.”

“You’re lying.”

“Nuh uh,” Stan lied, ducking lower under the screen.

Dipper hadn’t realized that he had stepped forward until he stumbled, falling into the memory gracelessly. Stan looked back at him, blinking a few times in surprise.

“Um,” Dipper said, suddenly terrified that he was breaking some kind of space time continuum. “Um.”

“You have a hole in your belly,” Stan observed, and glanced at it with mild distaste. There was a small pop!, and it disappeared.

Dipper’s mouth fell open. “What…?”

“It’s in my mind, Dipper. None of this is really real, you can do whatever you want,” Stan said, and then turned back to the game.

“You know who I am?!” Dipper asked.

“Well, duh,” Stan rolled his eyes. “This is a memory. I got all the same knowledge the big guy does. You’re pretty hard to forget. At least your smell is.”

That made Dipper laugh for real, sharp and echoing in the memory. Something rumbled in the distance, down the halls of Stan’s memory, and Dipper’s grin instantly died.

“Oh no,” he said. “Mabel, Soos! I-I have to help them!”

“Don’t keep ‘em waiting, kid,” Stan said, a small smile on his face as he turned back to the hidden boy. “I definitely don’t have any threes.”

“Who…” Dipper paused, just for a moment. “Who is that?”

Stan paused, glanced at the hidden boy, and then back at Dipper. He was frowning.

“...that’s no one important,” he said finally, in a voice that definitely wasn’t being honest. At least not entirely.

“...hey, no one important,” Dipper said weakly.

“He can’t hear you,” Stan said, turning back to his cards. “No one can. He’s just a memory.”

Just a ghost, Dipper almost said, but there was another rumble, and he sprinted after it, towards Soos and Mabel, a little more determined and a little braver than he was this morning.

There was a startling lack of spirits in the next few days that followed.

Soos’ abuelita’s house was free of ghosts completely, a bit to Dipper’s shock, and he wondered vaguely if the tiny old woman had chased them off. There was an edge to her that lurked behind her cloudy eyes, like a shark below the surface of the ocean. Dipper decided it would be wise not to test her.

How deeply insulting to nearly have the shack commandeered by a ten year old who had access to a bulldozer. How embarrassing to have to rely on the goodwill of poor abuelita, who barely had space for herself and her grandson. And how deeply, deeply upsetting to be sprung with bus tickets home and Stan’s regretful face. The only consolation was that Stan looked just as reluctant to send them back to Piedmont as they were to go. He couldn’t even look them in the eye.

Dipper couldn’t find it in himself to be angry at him, not after what he had seen in his mind.

But something must have changed from the start of the summer to now, something intrinsic to who Dipper used to think he was. Because the Dipper from the beginning of the summer probably wouldn’t have thrown himself off a ledge after a giant robot, even if it was to rescue Mabel. Though he would admit that they would have both been splattered across the forest floor without Mabel’s grappling hook either.

And Stan had found the true reason Gideon was able to win over the hearts and minds of Gravity Falls. No magic, no psychic powers, and certainly no helpful ghosts–just good ol’ fashioned spyware. It was almost quaint how un-supernatural it was.

But it had led back to the attic, unpacking suitcases for the second time that summer, Mabel jumping on a thoroughly beaten-down mattress once more, unable to contain her excitement once more. Dipper might have joined her if Stan hadn’t rapped his knuckles against the doorframe, life back in his eyes.

“You two settling back in alright?” He asked. “No hidden cameras in the corners or nothing?”

“Nope!” Mabel said cheerfully. “I burned the outfit Gideon made Waddles wear! It smelled like hairspray and now I’m seeing double!”

“That’s my girl!” Stan grinned, and glanced at Dipper. “Anything you wanna burn? We can dig an illegal fire pit out back. I found a bag of marshmallows that’s probably still good. Those expiration dates are probably just a suggestion.”

“Uh, I’ll let you know if I find anything,” Dipper said, tossing his backpack on the bed. The flap burst open–he desperately needed a new one–and he spotted two books inside. The journal and his own composition notebook of ghosts. He paused, mulling their contents over in his mind. Secrets knocked at the edge of his mouth once more, and for a moment, he considered laying all his cards on the table.

But maybe that was too many secrets for one day. Maybe just one would do.

“Actually, um,” Dipper said, fishing the journal out of his backpack. “I’ve been thinking. Mabel and I talked about this a few times, and she always said I should tell you about this. I always ignored her, but…I think she’s right.”

He glanced at Mabel, half-hoping she would interrupt and order him to shut up. But she just looked surprised by his candor, and when they made eye contact, she grinned, nodding quickly. She always despised keeping secrets. Dipper did too, he only did so by necessity.

“This is a journal I found in the woods,” Dipper said, handing over the book for Stan. He took his mostly because Dipper had shoved it into his hands, looking surprised. “It talks about all the crazy stuff that goes on in Gravity Falls. And I know it’s important. Gideon almost destroyed the whole town trying to get it. I don’t know what that means, and I have no idea who wrote it, but after everything…” Dipper took a breath. “I think you deserve to know about it too.”

Stan’s mouth was fixed in a thoughtful frown, the same look he had when numbers in the books didn’t quite add up, but Dipper couldn’t quite see his eyes behind his glasses. His hearing aide was gone–Dipper wondered when he took it out. Probably when the feedback from the cameras first started.

“Grunkle Stan?” Dipper asked, suddenly worried he might be in trouble.

And then Stan started laughing.

“Grunkle Stan?!” Dipper asked again, suddenly worried Stan had gone insane in a split second.

“Now I know where you’re getting it all from!” Stan cackled, flipping through the journal with far less care than Dipper had. “Spookums, monsters, ghosts! This kooky book’s been filling your head with conspiracies!”

Stan yanked the brim of Dipper’s hat over his eyes playfully, and Dipper ducked away, adjusting it. “It’s not fake!” Dipper protested, angry all over again. “It’s real! I’ve seen it!”

“You’ve seen the squash with a human face and emotions?” Stan asked, showing him the page. “That’s a great attraction idea, actually.”

“I-I haven’t seen that one specifically,” Dipper said. “But-”

“You gotta quit reading this nonsense for your own good,” Stan shook his head, still grinning. “Talk about an overactive imagination! Mind if I borrow this?”

“No!” Dipper said, but then realized he had misspoke when Stan stood up, already making his way to the door. “I-I mean, no, give it back! Don’t-!”

“Magic book!” Stan laughed, his gruff voice bouncing around the hall. “What’ll they come up with next?”

“No, I need it!” Dipper protested.

“Dipper, you don’t need that book!” Mabel said. She looked thrown by Stan’s reaction as well, but was still grinning. “The journal didn’t kick Gideon’s stupid butt. You did! All on your own! You’re a hero whether you got that journal or not!”

“I…” Dipper paused, and realized his heart wasn’t pounding. He hadn’t spiraled in weeks, and any panic that did sneak up on him was quashed, especially with the ghosts of Gravity Falls being little more than residents only he could see. His mind still tried to find something to fixate on, something to use to drive him to the edge, but it seemed quieter these days. There was so much around him to drown out the worst of it, after all. “...thanks, Mabel.”

He frowned before he could stop himself. “I still want the journal back, though.”

“Ah,” Mabel shrugged. “I’m sure you’ll get it back soon. What’s an old man gonna want with a smelly old journal anyway?”

“Yeah,” Dipper said, letting out a breath. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“At least there’s no more secrets!” Mabel said, looking pleased with the new development.

Dipper had no idea what would happen if he showed her his notebook. If he confessed how long he had actually been lying to her. Stan would brush him off, no matter how much evidence stacked up, but Mabel had no reason to doubt him other than her own eyes.

He wondered if she would hate him for it, for keeping a secret from her for so long when she had always been there for him when he was crashing like an out of control car. Maybe she would look at him with badly disguised pity, afraid to approach him when spirits clung to the edges of his attention like insistent children.

Or worst of all, she wouldn’t believe him, and all the suspicions that she had to have secretly held about his sanity would only be confirmed. Some days, Dipper still questioned it himself.

“Yeah,” he agreed, stuffing the notebook deeper into the backpack. “Yeah, it’s nice to get it off my chest.”

Something old and tired awoke from beneath the shack, like a corpse that would have much rather been allowed to rest, thank you very much. But the man in the basement had never been good at burying things.

Two spirits, nuisances and little else, watched the flashes thoughtfully with the kind of interest that people who had nothing to lose had.

“Think he’s gonna end the world?” Mike asked Angela.

“I dunno,” Angela said. “Be a crazy afterparty if he did, though. But I guess it’d be a pretty sad afterparty.”

“Yeah,” Mike said, watching the flashes from the windows, as if the thing in the shack could not be contained. And it couldn’t–they knew that, at least. “I guess you’re right. He’s ignored the warnings for this long. Sunk cost fallacy and all that.”

They watched their mediocre lightshow. Being dead was boring. They had to take whatever entertainment they could find.

“At least if this is the end,” Angela said. “It’ll be a helluva performance.”