Yet Another Summer

I Fell Down The Stairs Yesterday

Dipper cannot stand dreams. By the way – he doesn't really consider dreaming an action; not one you can take up.

We do not dream the dreams but are dreamt by them. He used to make an effort to memorize his – even had a dream book, upon waking used to immediately write down any detail before it faded. Not that he ever believed in their meanings – lest they should come true.

'Stains that bleach out on their own- ' He told a boy once. 'My dreams are like that. Or like water drying out.'

Now they are gone, mostly. Well, he doesn't remember any at least. They're like singular memories that come into mind sometimes. Leaving only emotions, echoing away into silence after waking. After that summer the emotion was fear, usually. Lurking, perhaps with no intent to ever resolve into anything more, but as if daring to investigate and to go down its rabbit hole so far until you couldn't pull your thoughts away if you tried.

Dipper is not superstitious, or – he wouldn't like to become superstitious. He does believe in reason, in science that proves herself right on her own leaving no doubt. Even if in her entire being she is just an aggregation of theories. It is hard not to get into a certain headspace if you've ever been in Gravity Falls. You cannot not believe in a creature who nearly killed you and your loved ones – he would think a lot about that – you cannot not believe in something you have seen so clearly and touched and cognized as if it were anything else.

Dipper's dreams foretell him one future grim; he would like to let himself snap his fingers at their meaning. But this dream is different – Dipper will not say it, bah, he's scared to even think it properly not to accidentally invite something onto him but – this dream is interactive, more actual.

He lays inside a cave and its stomach and walls are pressing against his skin. He feels them through layers of clothes – cold and sharp-edged. Getting to his feet abruptly, he thinks-

'I could have cracked my head open if the ceiling was any lower. I didn't even check.'

He looks around, a homogenous wall of darkness before his eyes, unchanged regardless the direction he turns his head in. He doesn't know how he knows it's a cave and not any other of places, but he is sure of it. The same way he knows he wouldn't be able to find a way out because there is no exit for him here.

Earth strives to eat him starting from the shoes, he prises away from teethless jaws, flees, stretches his arms in front of him but doesn't run into a wall nor anything really. His breathing doesn't echo but a pebble flying from under shoe's sole sounds like a canon firing.

Then he starts to hear murmuring and rustling. Eyes wide open, sightless, he roams around; there is presence in the darkness. Movement behind him, he turns around and again – scraping and grating, behind him, steps. He doesn't see anyone, he is not alone.

'They're coming back-' A thought appears, one that is not his own, overcomes him.

'Who is coming back?' He doesn't know.

That is a lie, he knows exactly. He can guess. Realizing with such precision would require a time for an idea to bloom, he shakes that thought out of his head just as it happens. A drop, cold, falls down into his hair. He howls and starts running again but noises follow him no matter how far away he gets.

His breath heavies, he slows down.

'They're gonna catch him-' Who's gonna catch him?

'Nightmare.' He didn't mean to think that, he wants to wake up.

'Demon.' He replies to himself anyway.

It is just a bad dream, he knows that, but you can die inside a dream too, right? Never waking up to spend the eternity deep underground.