Somewhere in the Woods: A Gravity Falls Mystery

Chapter 8

Stanford Pines's Journal #8

June 18, 2022

What a day.

Today was the day that we ventured into the Gravity Falls woods in search of Bill's petrified body. While I still can't confirm Nathaniel's spell that claims to bring him back can actually work, it's better just not to take any chances. I'm not putting the world under Bill's threat again.

We all met up at the Mystery Shack early that morning. Our whole team consisted of myself, Dipper, Mabel, Pacifica, Stanley, Soos, Wendy, and Dipper's friends. It felt like we were going on an old adventure from a decade ago. Even someone like me was feeling a bit nostalgic of that summer we all first met. But we had to focus. The possible fate of the universe was in our hands.

Once we were all together, we headed off into the woods. We headed towards the part of the woods that Bill's fortress was approximately floating over when he invaded our world. It was the best place to start.

After about an hour of hiking, we came to the spot. There didn't appear to be anything around there. We split up to see if we could find something. We scanned the area for quite a while.

Then I heard a scream. I turned around to see Dipper and Mabel trying to pull Pacifica from a hole she stumbled into. Once she was safe, I looked into it and I saw it. Way down at the bottom of the whole was the statue, completely in tact. His stone hand reaching out for a handshake like he would do. We tied a rope to a nearby tree and lowered it down into the hole. Dipper, Mabel, and I were the ones who went down. We slowly got to the bottom. It was almost completely dark aside from the light from above.

As I studied the statue, a flood of memories came flooding back to me. I remembered when I was first tricked by Bill back when I was still studying the town. I remembered the one-on-one battles I had with him in his home dimension. I remembered the nightmares that were unleashed into our world when he broke through. I was all coming back to me.

I was already working out how we were going to get it out of the hole. Surprisingly, it wasn't that heavy despite it being solid stone. We could easily tie it to another rope and rig up a pulley system that could haul it up.

While Dipper agreed with this idea, Mabel didn't seem to feel the same. She was suggesting that we just leave it, since it was already in a place where seemingly no one could reach it. I told her that I didn't want to take that chance. We needed to make sure it would get destroyed, basically diced to pieces. Dipper tried to get her to see otherwise, but it didn't seem to work. They got into a small argument that I had to put a stop to to get them to focus.

Then Mabel began taking notice of the cave around us. She pulled out her phone and shined its flashlight into the darkness. We saw that we were actually on come kind of perch in a much bigger cave, with what looked like remnants of a nest around us and the statue. Dipper then suddenly realized where we were.

He quietly told me that we were in the nest of a Pterodactyl that lived below the town. I remember speculating about that possibility during my initial studies, especially since many of the trees in Gravity Falls are excessively sappy. But I was never able to find any evidence to confirm this.

That's when I realized something kind of terrifying. We had been hearing what sounded like gusts of wind all around us. But now I know that that it was something flying around us. That Pterodactyl had been flying around us in the darkness this whole time. That's when I knew that we had to get out of there.

I tied the rope to Bill's top hat and instructed Dipper and Mabel to start climbing. When I turned to Mabel, I saw that she had found the creature. She was shining the flashlight right at it, staring at it while it stared back. I told her to be very quiet as it got closer and started sniffing her. I pulled out the small laser gun I had and fired it at the creature. It screeched and flew off into the darkness.

Dipper grabbed Mabel and we all started going up the rope. The creature made a few attempts to snap at us, and I fired at it every time it got closer. Once we got to the top, the others helped us out. I fired one last shot at the creature and that seemed to do it. It fell into the darkness, past the perch where the statue was. I can't confirm whether or not I killed it, but at least I knocked it out. Now we have the setup for our pulley system, so we didn't have to go back down there.

Everyone seemed happy. Despite the dangerous situation we were just in, it did feel like we were back on an old adventure, and even I have to admit that it was exciting.

However, things seemed a little tense between Dipper and Mabel. She had nothing to say and simply walked off. Dipper decided to go along with her back to the motel, with his friends and Pacifica following.

So right now, I'm attempting to rig up our pulley system along with Stanley, Soos, and Wendy. We think we'll get the statue out of the whole by the end of the day. The sooner we get this done, the better in my opinion.