𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙜𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙚𝙣 𝙛𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙨 ❥༺

7 - He Returns.

Mabel's POV:
Out of everything I could have expected to happen on a warm, summer evening, after mini golf, it was most definitely not what follows. After Stanford had called us inside, we all instantly interrogated him with questions about what was happening.

"Your Great Uncle Stan and I have made a rather, unsettling discovery." He announced.

"What is it? Is it zombies again? Is it Gideon?" Dipper interrupted.

"I wish it was that simple, but..." Stanford trailed off and led us to the vending machine in the gift shop. "Come with me." He typed in the code and opened it, revealing the secret elevator that had been hidden inside. As we descended down the elevator, I sung to myself to try to calm myself down, but we all knew this meant something serious. Everyone looked at each other intensely, silently reassuring each other that we were going to make it out okay.

The elevator doors pulled open, and we walked into the room with the disassembled portal casting a shadow on everyone's faces.

Stanford spoke. "Last year, we did good at defeating Bill — having to erase your Great Uncle Stan's memory to do so. However, we think there's a possibility he can return, and he might already be in the process of doing so."

"What?! But— we did it! We erased him, right?!" Dipper shouted and begun pacing in frantic circles.

"We think someone has somehow... reactivated his presence. We have been in constant contact with the time police who have been hyper-monitoring all anomaly-based scenarios within Gravity Falls," Stanford paused for a moment, then regained his senses, "and they notice a particular disturbance that may pose a threat."

"Like what? What happened?" Dipper cut in. Wendy, Soos, and I looked at each other once more as Dipper asked, and we nodded at one another.

Grunkle Stan stood up from the desk by the portal. "We think he has been summoned again." Stan sighed. "God knows who would want to cause such a thing — even the most evil mortal beings we know in this place are no match to Bill."

"What can we do to stop him before it becomes too late?" Wendy asked. "There must be a way, right?" Her tone shifted from concerned to panicked. "Right?"

"I think we have to wait until we have more information, but I just wanted to warn you guys. If you see something peculiar I need you kids to tell us, okay?"

"Okay," we all replied.

"Thank you, kids." Stanford smiled as warmly as he could given the situation.

We all took the elevator back upstairs to the gift shop and awkwardly decided to just keep going on with life as usual unless we noticed something peculiar. What could we do with our day?

"Any ideas?" Wendy asked, pushing herself onto the gift shop counter to sit down.

"I got one!" Soos piped up.

"I literally have no idea what we could do right now." Dipper sighed.

"I have an idea!" Soos shouted.

"I know, it's like, we've done everything here." Wendy bickered.

"Dudes, I have an idea." Soos repeated.

"Oh— really?" Wendy asked. "What is it, man?"

"Hear me out for this." Soos paused. "Ghost hunting."

"Oh man," Dipper panicked, "the last time I did ghosts it didn't go to well—"

"Wimp!" I yelled.

"Am not!" Dipper frowned. "Ghosts are horrifying to anyone, Mabel."

"Yeah, right." I scoffed. "You're just mad you had to do that dumb dance in the abandoned mart."

"That—" Dipper cut himself off. I had most definitely won that argument.

"Okay." Soos pulled a road map out of his pocket. "I know a place."

Wirt's POV:
I walked with Greg across the street to get back to our cabin after mini golf with the Pines Family. They had nicely drove us home but abruptly had to head inside for some emergency — what it could be, I had no idea. We crossed the dirt path to our cabin, as I noticed there was no car in the driveway. A good sign.

I held Greg's hand as I creaked the door open softly, attempting not to make noise out of the fear of getting caught. It was only our first day at Gravity Falls and if we got in trouble, she'd be mad for the rest of the summer.

"Wirt?" Greg said.

"Yeah, what's up?" I replied.

"Do you think they like us?" He asked as we walked into the empty cabin. The lights were off and dinner had already been made. 2 empty dishes were stacked in the sink and the leftovers were sitting on the counter of the tiny kitchen we had.

"Does who like us, Greg?"

"Mabel and everyone."

"Of course they do, why do you ask?"

"Oh. Okay." Greg replied. He didn't even finish his thought before grabbing a plate and filling it with the leftover dinner. He tended to do things like that.

I decided I wasn't hungry, and headed to my "bedroom." Once there, I knelled on the ground and looked through my bags. I pulled out a cassette tape and thought for a moment. Whenever I had feelings for someone, I would make them a mixtape with songs I associated with them. I had done so for Sara. Sometimes I felt like I missed her, but other times I remembered why we didn't work. Healing a broken heart is almost never linear — some days I would feel like I was right back where I started.

But then, at that moment, I felt different. I held the cassette in my hands for a moment, then placed it back on the ground. I grabbed a sharpie from the drawer of my nightstand, took off the cap, and wrote on it.

"For Dipper."