Back To Gravity Falls: Beware the Beast (Multiverse Crossover)

Their Eyes Downcast

Full chapter name: Their Eyes Downcast (and Ignored like Ghosts)
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The walk seemed long. Their conversation was dying out like a campfire, smoldering to ash. Useless dust in the wind.

Dipper walked a step ahead of Norman, keeping his eyes ahead as though creating his own sense of tunnel vision for the task ahead. His footsteps were a little too fast and too heavy, shoes slapping against the concrete road in an unpleasant and uneven rhythm. Norman tried to keep up, his shorter legs forcing him to speed up some just to keep up, his calves burning.

Dipper felt like a new heap of shit had rained down upon him when he reunited with Gideon, who wasn't so little anymore, and possibly no longer as terrible. He remembered the sight of Gideon's unsure gaze; Gideon's self-consciousness that he was much too proud to feel those years ago. Dipper feared what everyone being in Gravity Falls again could mean. What it would mean.

Then again, he reminded himself-- McGucket was gone, Pacifica supposedly having gone "missing", and Robbie god-knows-where on tour with his band-- reassured him some. Pieces were missing so, even if he feared Bill could strike again, he couldn't without all the needed pieces. There was only 7 of them now. That thought made his mood dampen even more.

He must take care that 7 continue to remain.

Add it to the list of crappy things, Dip, it's your responsibility yet again to save others from some big bad, Dipper told himself. At least it's not just me and Mabel against the world anymore...

Norman's eyes scanned the streets, the town quietly bustling along. Despite walking in the gutters of the street, the two boys were not yelled at to move by people in cars or by people on the sidewalk to step out of the street. They were essentially ignored, occasionally noticed but then overlooked. This unsettled Norman, although he didn't admit it aloud.

Back in Blithe Hollow, the town was probably the same size as Gravity Falls with probably the same amount of niche tourism and yet this town seemed... Self-absorbed? That was the only word Norman could come up with. Everyone seemed to ignore each other, eyes not meeting those outside their small groups. At least in Blithe Hollow they yelled at neighborhood kids to get out of the street, or get off their lawn. In Gravity Falls, there was no real interaction, perhaps due to the feeling that their all hiding one big secret.

Hiding Bill, or at least everyone trying to forget him, must be a full-time job, Norman thought. Maybe not, maybe, this is normal, people minding their own business...

Then, adding that to the unsettled feeling that Dipper seemed to radiate made Norman uneasy. Gideon had seemed nice. He seemed sad, but nice. 

Norman could tell he was lonely out there by himself, he knew the look in Gideon's eyes well enough because he saw the same look on his own face sometimes, felt those half-hearted smiles pulling the corners of his mouth. He wondered if Dipper saw those signs in Gideon too. Norman looked back over his shoulder and part of him wished they had stayed a little longer at Gideon's. Talking helps ebb the loneliness for a while, and even if he was being presumptuous (and Gideon wasn't actually sad), it couldn't hurt. 

Especially, since there seemed to be bad blood between Gideon and Dipper, he felt out of the loop again and it was just like the "ghost thing" all over again. No one to talk to, being ostracized, and it reminded him of something he hadn't noticed before. There were plenty of ghosts in Gravity Falls, that he'd seen and experienced firsthand, but none of them seemed interested in talking to him. Just like the live townspeople, no one seemed to be in the mood to talk.

"Is everyone always this quiet?" Norman asked Dipper with an uneasy lilt in his voice, "Even the ghosts are... not even looking at me. It's kind of scaring me, Dipper."

Norman makes eye contact with a spirit that seems to be an old man who may have died of suicide, rope marks barely visible on his ghost, following a young girl texting on her phone. The old man made eye contact with Norman, expression of boredom changing to forced disinterest as he turned his eyes away from the boy looking back at him in shock and back to his oblivious granddaughter.

"It's like they are forcing themselves to ignore me, Dipper. This has never happened before, not this much." Norman whispered, putting his hand on Dipper's shoulder tight enough to stop him from walking. "Look around, didn't you go to that diner at least once?"

Dipper nodded, "Lazy Susan works there." Noticing Susan, he waves to her as she sweeps dirt out through the door. She makes eye contact and turns her eyes down to her feet without waving back. "Maybe she just doesn't recognize me. I haven't been back since puberty, I'm sure I changed a lot."

"Does everyone in town know about... Him?" Norman asked, his voice careful.

"To varying degrees," Dipper explained, "some know he's a demon that tried to destroy the Falls, other people are privvy to the fact that he possessed Gideon and me. I will admit they were a lot more... welcoming before we left compared to now. It is a little weird. It might just be the timing, Bill was around when we were and now there's a big dog thing mauling people alive. I'll admit the timing is not great, though it was happening before we got here."

"They probably don't know that." Norman admitted. "You should check on other patterns though, maybe this beast has killed before now. There are a lot of ghosts here, even if they are ignoring me, maybe they worry since I'm with you the beast may try to destroy their spirit."

"It can do that?" Dipper asked, suddenly feeling the need to shake off a chill.

"Well, it can be done, sure. Maybe this thing is smart enough to know how, but that's a big leap. We haven't seen it messing with ghosts so far."

"True." Dipper nodded, "My brain is just all over the place. I'm trying to make connections the best I can, but a lot of my theories are flimsy."

"That's why Coraline and Wybie are gonna look into it." Norman assured, "I'm sure they'll find something, even if it's a long shot."

"We're here." Dipper pointed to the house ahead of them, smaller than the Shack. "I think." They reached the mailbox which read "The Brothers Stan" (matched with a crude doodle of a fez and a 6-fingered hand). Dipper pursed his lips in an unamused expression, "Yeah, it's them."