Somewhere in the Woods: A Gravity Falls Mystery

Chapter 6

Dipper's Journal #3

June 17, 2022

It's amazing how some places just never seem to change. It's been years since Mabel and I have been back in Gravity Falls, and yet, the tiny town hasn't changed a bit. Everything is pretty much exactly as it was the last time we left.

Words can't really describe how excited I am to be back. I've had a lot of adventures over the last few years, but this one feels different. We're going back to the place that set me on this path of adventuring and weirdness exploration in the first place. I get to share the place that changed my life with my friends, and finish up our movie as well. And to top it off, I'm back with Mabel, Ford, and Pacifica.

As we drove through downtown, Charlie and Katie were taken aback by how small and rustic the town was. For me, it was just nice to see the old sights; like the local arcade and Lazy Susan's Diner. It's not often you get to see a place so quaint.

Then, of course, we made it to the Mystery Shack. The place where Mabel and I spent that summer. It's good to see that it's still in business, and also haven't changed a bit since the the last time we saw it. Even with Soos in charge, it looks like he kept it in pretty much the same condition that Stan did, albeit in a way that's nicer looking.

Speaking of Soos, he was out front finishing up with a group of tourists when we showed up. He can still pull off the suit and fez look. The second he saw us, he ran over and gave Mabel and I a big hug, just like when we were kids. He was so happy to see us again. Honestly, even ten years older, Soos also hasn't changed a bit.

Well, except for the fact that he's a dad now. He and Melody got married during our time away, and now they're parents to a little girl named Becky. You know, I always did think Soos would make a great dad, just judging on how he protected us during all of our crazy adventures. He always put Mabel and I's safety over his own.

But reintroductions had to wait. Ford wanted to get down to business. Soos told us that Stan was already at Northwest Manor investigating clues from the journal page. So we made arrangements for all of us to meet at Lazy Susan's Diner that night to formally catch up.

I was very curious to see how Pacifica's old house would've changed over the years. Ever since McGucket bought it, I've wondered how it was going to change. It was a lot more space for his various inventions.

Turns out, quite a lot. The manor looked pretty much the same on the outside, the inside was covered with different kinds of contraptions. Ford said it looked like how the Mystery Shack did when it was his home.

We also reunited with Stan, who already had some ideas on where to look for clues. He took us back to a room full of old paintings. In fact, the same room where Pacifica and I hid from that vicious ghost. We saw a lot of the same paintings that she discovered, all depicting times when the Northwest family tricked someone throughout their history. I could tell that she didn't like seeing those again.

Unfortunately, we didn't find anything relating to the treasure in that room, surprisingly. So we decided to scour the rest of the house for clues. We spent a good while searching around the house for anything that represented the journal or the treasure. We kept looking through every last corner, but nothing was coming up.

That is, until we found something very concerning. Off in a corner, we found a rather large tapestry showing people worshiping Bill. McGucket had no real explanation why he didn't take it down. We found a button underneath it that opened a secret door to an old stone stairway.

We followed it down to a room that was just full of Bill related things. It was basically a shrine to him. It was actually kind of terrifying. We had never seen anyone outside of our group even know about Bill, let alone actually worship him. We never thought he would actually have followers.

On a pedestal in the middle of the room, we found a journal. It was the journal that the page had been ripped out of. It was only half full of entries written by whoever originally had the treasure (he never mentioned his own name). The other half was full of entires written by Nathaniel. He talked about how he was going to use the treasure to devote himself to Bill's cause. There was never any mention of when he started worshipping Bill, but that's all he talked about. He said the mansion was built to protect himself and his future descendants from Bill's destruction so they could help him build his new world.

The last entry was the scariest. It talked about how Nathaniel was trying to come up with a spell to bring Bill back if something were to happen. While it didn't give any details about what the spell requires, that was enough for us. Whether he was serious or not, this meant that there might be a way for Bill to be resurrected back into our world.

Ford had a theory about this. When Stan made the deal with Bill to allow him into his mind, Bill left a stone statue of his body behind. We weren't sure if it was still there, as most of his influence was erased after we destroyed him. But we didn't want to take any chances. We had to make sure that statue was erased, and if it wasn't, then we had to destroy it. We had to stop any chance Bill had to return to our world. That's why we're all going out tomorrow to try and find it.