”Damn, this better work..” Dipper mumbled to himself as he sat alone in his room, completing the ritual in order to summon him again. It wasn’t his idea, he didn’t even want to do it, but he knew it was the only other option he had. Gravity Falls was dying, the plant, the animals, even the people were being slaughtered by whatever came through that rift, paralleling the past.
Six years. Six whole years had passed since Dipper’s first vacation to Gravity Falls, six years since he discovered that monsters did exist, six years since he nearly lost everything, and six years since he managed to get rid of Bill and close the portal. Dipper thought he would have a peaceful life after that, at least more peaceful than one in which he was constantly looking over his shoulder for that old demon, but he was gone now. Things would be okay, Dipper was 19 now, all grown up. Mabel and him still visited the town every summer, it was a traditional they couldn’t break now and frankly, he wouldn’t want to miss even one day away from Gravity Falls. Everything was going to be okay.
At least it was supposed to be. It was the same routine, Dipper and Mabel would arrive back in Gravity Falls, greet their old friends, unpack in their rooms. It wasn’t supposed to deviate from that norm, but really, how could Dipper be so forgetful? It was never normal in Gravity Falls. First, the signs were small, easily overlooked symptoms of a much bigger sickness. There were reported energy spikes, mysterious weather patterns, even the animals themselves seemed to sense that something stranger than what even Gravity Falls could produce. Birds were seen flying off in the dozens, dogs would bark at nothing in the night.. and at first, it was exciting. Something new, something strange! He could study it himself, study it with Ford.. it was just so amazing to him that he might be able to solve a mystery about Gravity Falls!
That was, until the deaths happened. At first, it was small things. Plants would wilt out of the blue, then the birds began to drop right out of the sky. It almost seemed as if the whole forest, the whole town was getting sick from these strange anomalies, it was even affecting the people by now. It wasn’t long after until mutilated bodies were found, their blood and bones scattered all around in a grotesque show. It almost made Dipper sick to his stomach learning about the events, the nauseous feeling only growing with each report. Sometimes it was a week or so in between, sometimes only days, but not a single person could figure out what was happening.
But the Pines knew. Ford suggested it first, something demonic in origin, obviously attracted to the town after Bill had had his way with the dimension. It most likely weakened the barrier between Earth and the rest of the multiverse, a thread had been left hanging and that was all this thing needed to tear it open again. None of them, however, knew what it was, what he wanted, or how it even got in here or where it did. The hole was too small and all it did was hide and kill.
At first, they believed they could figure out a plan to find and kill the demon, but as the death toll continued to rise, the outcome seemed too grim. They were all desperate now and it wasn’t until Stan secretly suggested to Dipper that maybe, just maybe they needed Bill once again. He obviously hated the idea, outright refused it.. but they were desperate and after insistent demands and repeated persuasions, Dipper finally caved. He needed to protect the town, needed to save these people from whatever it was.
And now, he was sitting alone in the dark, cursing under his breath at the demon, Bill, Stan, and even himself. He hated what he was doing, but he had to finish it, his tone bitter and irritated. After putting the finishing touches on everything, he began reciting the needed words to return the damned dream demon back the world. Stan was convinced Bill wasn’t completely dead.. maybe he was right. Or maybe this was a waste of his time.
“Bill.. damn, Bill, if you’re still alive, you better come, I don’t have time to wait.”
Bill had no idea how long he had been drifting. His mind, his entire self had been fragmented, scattered through the mindscape. He was aware, and slowly had been piecing himself back together as he came across fragments of himself. After all, he was a being of pure energy. Energy could not be destroyed, but it could be scattered. And boy, had he been scattered, the force of the memory gun throwing him from Stanley’s mind and sending the fragments of his energy far and wide. It took years to even get as much of himself together as he had, the best he could do for the first few years was snatch bits of himself as they drifted near, and he still had years to go before he could even hope to attempt to reach out to the pieces farther.
And, as if to mock him for his attempt to destroy the human world, many of the bits of energy he had already managed to reclaim had been tainted. The energies of Stanley’s destroyed memories and emotions had been seared into his own, and for the first time in his entire existence he knew what loneliness felt like. He didn’t even have enough of him own identity pulled together to feel disgust at the human emotion, even though he knew that he should, he had enough of himself to know he was a demon, not a human. But still, the feeling persisted, and It would be ages until he could reach out to other dimensions again in an attempt to relieve the feeling. In this place, a second felt like an eternity.
Eventually, he became aware of an odd tugging sensation. Something echoed in his mind, almost like someone was calling out. Before Bill could begin to try to figure out what was going on, suddenly all the scattered energies that should have taken a hundred or more years to gather, were rushing towards him, and he was reeling from the feeling of the tainted energy as he was forcefully dragged out of the mindscape.
For a few moments, Bill just floated, reeling from the feeling of regaining all of his energies like that at once. And it all felt off as well, he could still feel the remnants of human memories and emotions seared into his own. He hoped it wasn’t permanent, but it really wasn’t every day you got burned up in a humans mind by a memory ray. He had no way of knowing how long the effects would last. At least the loneliness could be fixed now though, that had been a summoning. Which meant someone else was here.
Bill opened his eye, looking around the darkened room until he saw a figure below him, sitting on the floor in front of a summoning circle, looking up at him. A human, that would put him on earth then? A quick check with his newly regained magic, yep, this was earth. And on top of that, Gravity Falls! The very town he had taken over, tried to destroy. He wondered how long ago that was in human years, how long had it taken for the humans to forget what happened, for one to not know who he was and to summon him?
“Oh, Gravity Falls! It is good to be back!” he said cheerfully, a part of him aware he may have been silent a bit too long. But no matter, the human probably couldn’t tell anything about him was off.
“The name’s Bill Cipher! And who are you? I usually know everything that goes on around these parts, but I haven’t been in this dimension for a very long time! You know, you kind of remind me of someone…” Bill took notice of the hat for the first time and almost flinched back. Pine Tree?No, it couldn’t be. There was no way anyone in the Pines family would ever summon him again. He knew Stanley used to sell a ton of those dumb hats, it probably was a coincidence this person had the same stupid hat. Maybe he could convince the kid to burn the hat for whatever deal he had summoned Bill for.
May's Gravity Falls Blog 