Chapter Text
The tape had no label other than “PLAY ME”, which wasn’t particularly helpful in gaining context for what exactly this was.
Dipper had described it as demonic possession. Stan could only hope that was just his overactive imagination at work.
He hit play and braced himself for seeing his brother’s face again for the first time in years. Even if it was only through a screen, it still made something freeze up in his chest. Guilt? Grief? Stan didn’t know.
The whites of Ford’s eyes were instead bright yellow. This, on its own, did not necessarily mean anything awful, but it was certainly creepy.
“Welcome back to puppet hour with Bill! Say hi, kids!”
Who the hell was Bill?
“Today’s puppet is my old pal, Sixer. Sixer’s had a rough day, but his night was even rougher. Wanna see?”
Yeah, Stan was willing to believe Ford was possessed. This might have looked like his brother, but it didn’t move or speak like him.
The clips that followed began as concerning before escalating to full-on horror. Partying and getting a particularly embarrassing tattoo to eating live spiders and hammering a nail into his own hand.
Stan physically recoiled watching that. He hoped Dipper hadn’t made it this far into the video. No one should have to see something so gruesome about their family member.
If this “Bill” demon was possessing Ford’s body, why was he making him do all this? Was this how demons had fun or was there something more to it?
Was this what Ford’s life had been like before he got sucked into the portal? Stan had always imagined him happily cataloging moths and cryptids in his journal with little worry in the world, what with his grant funding to pay all the bills. But was he being tortured that whole time?
On the television screen, Ford stood in a payphone booth and dialed a number that Stan recognized.
That had been his number at one point. Had Ford, or whoever this was, tried to reach out to him?
Stan would have remembered getting a call from his long estranged brother.
“Hey, brother, it’s Sixer. I’m going to take a swim in the frozen lake tomorrow, and I might not ever come back, so if you don’t hear from me, I just want you to know that it’s because I never loved you. Buh-byeeeee.”
The dial tone beeped, and Stan struggled with the newfound information that all that had kept him from coming to Gravity Falls sooner was a broken payphone. Even as much as it would have hurt –and, to be honest, did still hurt– to hear that Ford never loved him, there was nothing that would have stopped Stan from driving up to Oregon and talking his brother off the ledge.
Stan couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried, but he was certainly in tears after watching that.
Ford had been about to kill himself. Or, this demon had been about to kill him and frame it as a suicide. Is that what would have happened had Stan never arrived?
If Stan had actually gotten this call, would Ford still be around?
Why hadn’t Ford himself called sooner? Stan could have helped! He would have helped! If he had known what Ford was going through, he wouldn’t have let him suffer alone. He was angry with Ford for keeping this all to himself, but more than that, Stan was concerned and terrified and saddened by what his brother had been forced to live through.
Ford, or who–what–ever this was, turned to face the camera before delivering a final message.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Look what you made me make you do! Tomorrow’s tape is gonna be much worse. Want the show to end? Go downstairs and turn on the portal. Or I’m gonna have to show you what I’m really capable of.”
Stan was going to be sick. He’d spent the past thirty years trying to turn that portal on to bring Ford back, but was he making a mistake? If this portal was so dangerous that Ford had endured all these tortures rather than turn it on, was Stan making the wrong choice?
No. He had to bring Ford back. Who knew what kinds of horrors this monster could be inflicting on him on the other side? If Ford was here, Stan could watch out for him. And if the demon followed him in, Stan was going to give that bastard a good suckerpunch to the face.
Come hell or high water, Stan was going to get that portal up and running. He failed to save his brother all those years ago, and he wouldn’t make the same mistake again.