Chapter Text
The door to the back room creaked open slowly, with a dangerous tremble and matching crumble of wood from the hinges. Dipper Pines squinted at the sliver of light laid across the floor within and dared to push further; the walls seemed to protest, but nothing fell over, and given the sort of luck they’d been having today that was as good as an invitation to come in.
The room he stepped into was small and sagging, with dull pinkish light falling through an ancient grimy window and what looked like a hole in the middle of the wooden floor. He could just barely make out the shape of a bedframe by one wall, and something massive – a wardrobe, perhaps? – on another, but aside from that the only contents of the area were splinters and dust motes. He hunched his shoulders and knew not to be disappointed, but was anyway. This was the first human structure they’d seen all day. Still nothing worthwhile.
He retreated to the cobwebbed hall and called out, “Not in here. You having any luck?”
For a minute there was no response. Then, with a thump and a cough, Mabel stumbled out of the dark kitchen doorway and leaned up against the wall, mouth and nose covered by one sweater sleeve. “Nah,” she said, voice muffled, waving the thick air in front of her face; Dipper made a concerned move toward her, but she shook her head. “’S just dusty in there,” she clarified, and cleared her throat. “I’m fine.”
“So, nothing at all?” Dipper asked again, digging his fingers into the spongey doorframe.
“No,” she said again, and opened her palms. “I thought maybe there’d be some food, like in jars or cans. I dunno how anybody ever lived out here.” Dipper nodded.
Nothing whatsoever. He shouldn’t be surprised. Outside, the forest was growing leaden with shadow.
Mabel crossed her arms and cleared her throat loudly, something she’d gotten into the habit if doing lately in an attempt to cover the sound of her stomach growling. Dipper wasn’t fooled, and gave her a strained look which she deflected with a cheery grin. “You know, even if there’s no food here, look on the bright side. We still found a place to stay for the night!” She raised a hand above her head to indicate the peeling cottage around them. In response, the whole thing seemed to moan and slump, and a shiver ran up Dipper’s neck.
“Not a chance,” said the eighteen-year-old, crossing his arms tightly. Mabel looked hurt that he would dismiss her happy suggestion out of hand, and he added, “Sorry, but if even a raccoon runs across the roof in the middle of the night, I think the whole thing’s gonna collapse.”
“But it’s --” She cast worried eyes around the dingy room. “I mean, it’s old, so – it’s lasted this long, right? What are the odds it goes down, y’ know, tonight?” Not even she sounded convinced, so Dipper didn’t waste his breath arguing the point. He understood her protests, though; last night had been bad enough that he, too, was almost willing to risk being buried under a half-ton of wood in order to avoid exposure to the dark again. He shuffled forward with his hands in his pockets. Mabel’s good spirits were visibly starting to crack, so he nudged her slightly and did his best to smile. “Hey. At least the clouds cleared up. If we sleep outside, we’ll be able to see the stars.”
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.” He knew she wasn’t reassured by that – neither was he – but it was an illusion they were both willing to feed on the off-chance it would offer some comfort to the other. “And, y’ know, there aren’t any lights anymore, so we’ll be able to see the stars really well. You’re right, Dip.” In the dimming light, she sought out his hand and squeezed it. “I trust you. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
“Yeah,” he said weakly.
“Yeah,” she repeated again. They both looked out the slanted front door. Evening was almost upon them. They were running out of time.
Slowly, they exited the dilapidated cottage one after the other, into the deep gray woods without. The sky was lightly touched with pink and the darkness beneath the trees was growing. The leaves hushed quietly at their backs as they passed beneath the curling branches.
Above their heads to the east, the moon sat overturned in the sky, halfway to full, for the second night in a row.
–
The shadows were starting to scream again.
Dipper walked close at his sister’s side. If he was the one covering the rear, Mabel would be the first to run into any trouble or trap lying in wait ahead; but if he led the way, she was liable to be taken by surprise from behind, possibly before he could help. Neither was a risk he was willing to take, so the twins made their wide path slowly through the trees, keeping always within two paces of one another for greatest security – or at least what passed for that in a situation where they had no food, few weapons, and nowhere safe to sleep.
“If it had just happened any other night,” Dipper muttered under his breath for the dozenth time as they walked. Any other damn time at all, he would have been ready for this, or closer to it. He wasn’t the sort to be caught unprepared; he, after all, was the one who always ensured that the family car was stocked with clean gauze and Tylenol within date; he who had bought two back-up can openers to store in the basement pantry and studied the SAS Survival Guide like a textbook; he who kept four bug-out bags, labeled Mom, Dad, Mab., and Dip., stashed under his bed at all times, just in case. In some ways he’d been sure he’d never need to use them; the possibility of global annihilation had been ended five years ago, after all. But those little safety nets, scattered here and there, added just the reassurance he’d found himself needing in order to sleep at night. Doomsday was a game he’d played before, and the only way to win was if he and the people he loved managed to live through it.
It was the fact of his usual preparedness that really made their current circumstances sting that much worse, though. Of all the times and places he’d imagined the world could end (and he’d imagined most), the very last he’d ever anticipated was in the middle of the school gymnasium while he was slightly drunk, hitting on a girl from student council, and dressed as a leprechorn. It would be a hell of a story to tell the grandkids someday, but Dipper pulled himself out of rumination when he felt Mabel place a hand on his shoulder.
“Did you hear that?” she asked him. She was trying to keep her voice casual. Trying.
“No,” he mumbled, looking this way and that. “I wasn’t paying attention.” Dull gold still touched the tree trunks above their heads, but the angle grew lower every minute.
“I think it was --” But Mabel didn’t have to say, because it sounded again: a high noise, part whistle or cackle or screech, distant but bloodcurdling, and still far too close for comfort. Dipper palmed the handle of the knife on his belt as the sound ran frisson, unbidden, down his spine.
His throat had gone unexpectedly dry. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s them again.”
Mabel wrapped her arms tight around her body and took a deep breath. “I really wanted to sleep inside tonight, Dipper,” she said, voice small. “I really don’t want to do this again.”
“I know,” he said. “Me neither.” He licked his lips and unbuttoned the knife from its canvas sheath, as a reassurance. “You know, if they wanted to hurt us, they had plenty of chance to do it last night,” he said, trying to keep his tone confident. “This is the second night and we still haven’t seen head or tail of… whatever they are. I don’t think they want anything to do with us, Mabel.” The screaming swelled again temporarily, ululating, as if in laughter. Dipper’s stomach dropped, and he swallowed and kicked at the ground, where dry leaves scattered before the blow. The area in which they stood could not fairly be called a clearing so much as a cradle between tree roots, but the ground was relatively flat, and unobstructed enough that they might be able to make a fire again. “Maybe we could just set up camp here,” he said, despite his dread. For her sake, he wasn’t going to act afraid.
Mabel crouched down so that the back of her green skirt dragged on the hard-packed dirt. She rested her back against a tree trunk and wrapped her arms around her knees, eyes on the branches above their heads. The air was neutrally warm, the leaves of the half-fallen canopy above them a spectrum of yellow through red through brackish brown, all touched with light from the end of the day. A spot of gold fell between the branches and lit up her cheek. She looked indescribably sad. “Mabel?” he said. “Are you okay?”
“Do you think Mom and Dad are dead?” she asked.
A spear of emotion pierced his stomach at the question. “No,” he lied without hesitation, and crouched down next to her at the base of the tree, flipping his knife over and over in his hand. “Nah, Mabel. They’re… they’re just not here.”
“But where is here?” she asked, turning to look at him. The sunspot moved from her left cheek to her right ear and limned every flyaway brown hair near her temple. “What the hell happened, Dipper? Where did everybody go?” It was the same question Dipper had been asking himself since the night before, and one for which he had no answer. It was yet another reason for him to be furious with himself over their circumstances; maybe he would have been able to speculate with more with certainty if he’d had his wits about him when the world ended, but the fact was that he had completely failed to notice that anything was even wrong for a full five minutes after the fact.
It was the night of the Senior Spooktacular Halloween Gala, and Dipper had three ounces of liqueur in his system, a sparkly cloth horn and horse ears on his hairband, and the mistaken impression he was getting in good with class treasurer Bonnie Lee. The walls of the gym were draped in orange and white streamers, the lights were low, and the theme banner hanging from the ceiling read “A Bubbling Brew,” which several students had independently taken as an invitation to spike the punchbowl, resulting in a beverage hovering somewhere around 120 proof. As far as Dipper was concerned, this was about as good as school dances got.
“Y’know, I almost caused the apocalypse,” he said, not quite slurring his words as he leaned up against the wall at Bonnie’s side. She took a bite of the grocery store cookie gingerly pinched between the folds of a paper napkin and squinted at him.
“What did you say?” she asked loudly.
“I said I almost ended the world once,” he yelled over the techno remix of the Monster Mash blaring from the speakers near the ceiling.
“Cool,” she yelled back, and gave him a little smile which, had he been sober, he would have recognized as more polite than flirtatious, and duly backed off. Instead he grinned widely. This is going great.
“Yeah,” he shouted as she started to turn back to her friends on her other side. “I got possessed by a demon and almost died.” She wrinkled her nose, but tried to give him a half-interested smile.
“I can’t imagine what a demon-possessed unicorn would look like,” she teased. Dipper was confused for a second until she nodded at his headband.
“Oh!” he said, reaching up to finger the prop. “Oh, no, I’m not a unicorn.” He plucked at his green shamrock t-shirt. “See, I’m a leprechorn.”
“A what?”
“A leprechorn!” He stupidly made hooves with his fists and pawed the air. “Half magical horse, half angry little man. Very dangerous! Neighh.” She laughed, almost genuinely this time, a sound that made Dipper suddenly very warm. On a whim, he leaned forward slightly. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen. He just knew that he had a good feeling about it.
And then with an electronic buzz and pop, the music died and the lights shut off. A collective groan went up from the students gathered in the gym, along with the sound of yelling and of dozens of bodies stumbling in the dark. Dipper leaned up close to the wall to stay oriented. He just had to wait it out; this would surely be fixed in a couple of minutes.
The only source of light was a dull, almost imperceptible blue glow from the small, high windows opposite him. He found his eyes drawn to them as he spread his arms along the wall, embracing it in his drunken state. The shapes of the windows burned themselves into his retinas in the dark, and flash-danced yellow on the inside of his eyelids every time he blinked. It was mesmerizing. He realized suddenly that he was very tired, and that Bonnie no longer seemed to be standing at his side. She’d taken her first chance to escape. Of course she had. What was he thinking? Stupid, stupid, stupid.
These thoughts were deep and distracting enough that it took Dipper quite a while to realize that the gym had gotten very silent. As his eyes accustomed to the dark, he saw the dim light glinting off the shiny gym floor, and realized that it was pretty weird he could see so much of the floor, and so little of any people on it. He turned to his right to see if anyone had joined him by the wall for safety. No one. Hesitantly he took a step out, arms extended outward, feeling for another body.
His sneaker hit the floor abruptly, and squeaked. The sound echoed across the walls. His blood ran cold and he started walking faster.
There was no one here. The gym was completely empty.
Had he blacked out? Had they evacuated for the power outage and he’d somehow failed to notice everyone leaving? Even the exit sign above the door on the east wall was dead. That wasn’t supposed to happen. In his panic he lurched forward into the plastic table holding the punchbowl, and sent it toppling over while he yelled in pain. Overpoweringly hard punch spread across the floor, and he slipped in it when he tried to continue forward. Another shout echoed between the rafters.
Finally he stumbled to his feet, sopping wet and smelling of Southern Comfort, and made it to the east wall, feeling desperately for the doors. When he finally shoved them open, no alarm sounded as the signs posted on them threatened. He took a few steps further and collapsed on the soccer field, head spinning.
It was completely silent, and completely dark. No traffic, no city glow, not a single voice. Everybody was gone. He’d been left behind. But something else was missing, too. Something really important –
“Mabel,” he whispered. His head snapped up toward the pitch-black field. He screamed, “MABEL!” and his voice echoed limply off the goalposts and bleachers. Despair filled him. Why would he expect her to be out here anyway, she could be anywhere at all, he was such an idiot –
And then against all odds, he heard the responding “Dipper!” screamed from a far distance, and turned to see his sister running toward him along the school track, with a pair of cat ears in her hand and tears in her eyes.
“…Dipper?”
Back in the present, he raised his gaze, unaware he’d drifted so far away. Mabel was looking at him, hands still clutching her knees, sunspot still lighting up her unbrushed hair. Far away, a crow was quorking loudly. “Sorry,” he said, rubbing one eye with his palm. “Got thinking.”
“That’s not like you,” she joked, elbowing him gently in the ribs. He smiled a little, but let it fade away again.
“Mabel,” he asked after a minute. “What was it you said to me when we met up outside of the gym on Halloween?”
“After the…?” He nodded. She raised an eyebrow in thought and turned a little red. “I think I said the moon ate everybody.”
“Yeah. That was it.” The moon ate everybody, she’d sobbed incoherently as she stumbled up to him in her black dress and whiskery makeup, and he’d said, No, no, the lights just went out, Mabel, we’ve gotta find where everyone went –
But he was wrong. The lights hadn’t just gone out. The stars had too, as well as the moon, which, as Mabel described tearily after her panic wore out, had suddenly grown to thrice its normal size in the sky and seemed to stare at her before disappearing altogether, along with the group of friends she’d been sitting with out on the green. One second they were there and the next they’d gone, just as had happened in the gym. Dipper didn’t know what to say to that.
When they turned together back to the school, it was to find it dilapidated and mossy, as if it had been abandoned for fifty years.
It, and the rest of the school campus, was nearly completely grown over by ancient trees.
So it was that even the best-laid plans are laid to waste. They were able to scrounge a random few items of clothing from the suddenly-grown-over remains of Dipper’s gross car, including Mabel’s once-thought-lost teapot sweater, but all of the important things – the MREs and satellite phones and flashlights and water purification tablets and sleeping bags and sutures – were at home, and home, as it turned out, didn’t really exist anymore. Dipper and Mabel walked for half an hour through the streets of Piedmont, which grew thicker and thicker with the depths of the forest with each step, and arrived at their house to find it halfway collapsed and completely empty. They screamed for their parents, tried to dig through the rotten wood and gray insulation, kicked at the walls that were still standing, and finally collapsed together on the front doorstep, keeping close to one another with sore throats and the deepening suspicion that they might be the last two people on Earth.
They cried, a little. No shame in that. But they were the Mystery Twins, or at least they used to be, and despair was never going to hobble them for long. So sitting on the dusty stoop of their childhood home in the darkness of a void, they made their plans.
When they looked back up again, the moon was back to sitting there above them as if it had never left, laying innocently upside-down in the sky like the punchbowl on the gym floor.
At the base of the tree, Dipper hitched up the backpack on his shoulders. Piedmont had deteriorated rapidly after that, but they were able to salvage a few key items from a half-rotten storefront: spare clothes, thin blankets, a compass, a camping knife, an old barbecue lighter, and a pack for each of them. They had no food, no shelter, and around midnight, terrible screaming had taken up from the woods which kept them from sleep all night – as if they’d have been able to do so anyway. By the time morning peeked over the treetops, the city was completely gone to the encroaching forest, but they still had each other, and they had a goal: They were going to go back up to Oregon.
After all, no matter how frightening and bizarre this all was, they had a pretty good guess as to where the problem had originated, and where they needed to be in order to try and fix it.
As if she could read his mind, Mabel murmured, “Everything about this really sucks, but… I’m glad it’s made you willing to see Grunkle Stan again.”
Dipper rubbed his thumb along the hilt of the knife, still turning it over and over in his hand. “If he’s even there,” he said. “He might be missing too, Mabel. Probably is.”
“Well, all three of us are kind of Persons of Interest where weird paranormal kablooie is concerned,” she said, waving her hands around for emphasis. “And you and I are still here, so maybe Stan is…” She let the idea peter out with a shrug. A little frown creased her brow. “I really hope so.”
Dipper wanted to hope the same, but it was difficult when it conflicted so sharply with his commitment to never speaking to Stan again. He’d stood by it for five years now despite all pressure from his sister, and was quite proud of that. “Yeah, well,” he said, changing the subject and finally moving to stand again. “We’re not gonna find out till we get there, and we have a pretty long time before that happens, so… No point dwelling on it.” Mabel gave him a worried look, but didn’t press the subject. While Dipper set to gathering wood for kindling, she pulled out her phone and turned it on. They limited themselves to one signal check each day, unless they had a good reason to do it more often; turning a phone on and off over and over is hell on the battery. After two days, Mabel still had a little more than half power, while Dipper was in the lower quarter. “Any luck?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
She confirmed it with a depressed, “No.” Her phone shut down again with a twinkle and she stood up to help.
They had their fire built before the sun went down, and sat huddled close to it while they watched the last light disappear from the sky above the treetops. Closer than before, the inhuman screams started up again, twisting between the trees like grasping hands. Dipper tensed, and Mabel shivered and bounced her feet restlessly with the blanket around her shoulders.
“I reeeally hate this,” she said, voice tight.
“They won’t hurt us,” Dipper said, but he was just as nervous as she. They – whatever they were – had hadn’t been so close last night. Their cries continually came and went, fading into the forest before returning with a vengeance and then moving away again. It was almost intolerable. It wasn’t enough that they were alone in the woods and scared, without food or supplies; it wasn’t enough that they’d already been reduced several times to scavenging for wild mushrooms to eat, only to lose faith that Dipper’s mycology was up to scratch; it wasn’t even enough that they were trekking through an apocalypse which they by all rights should have averted years ago, and never had to think back on again.
No. They also had to deal with being stalked each night by whistles and screams that made them afraid to spread a toe too far from the firelight, seeming perfectly timed to startle them from sleep whenever they started to doze. This was the second night in a row that they would spend feeling like they were surrounded by carrion animals waiting for the moment to pounce.
And to make things even worse, it was the first night where Dipper also had the feeling that he was being watched.
The screaming from the woods was in one of its lulls the first time he thought he saw movement out of the corner of his eye, but it was gone before he could look. He told himself it was nothing. Then, as Mabel hunkered down in her blanket, eyes drooping closed, Dipper felt a creep fall down his neck and instinctively glanced up past her head, to one of the trees just beyond the ring of their firelight, perhaps twenty feet away.
There it was again. A hurried movement, and the whisk of loose fabric disappearing behind the trunk. His shoulders went tense with fear, but he swallowed and said, as quietly as he could, “Mabel.”
She didn’t respond at first. “Mabel,” he said again, no louder, and her eyes finally opened.
“Mm?” she asked, blinking tiredly at the fire.
“I need you to wake up, Mabel.” Her brow creased and she started to look around but he said, “No. Don’t move. Don’t look now. Someone’s following us.” Her eyes widened, but she stayed still.
“Who?” she breathed. “A person?”
His heart thrummed at the possibility. “I don’t know. But I don’t appreciate being stalked in the dark, you know? No matter who’s doing it.” He glanced back at the tree, just for a second. Nothing moved. “You wanna find out who this creep is and teach him something about messing with the Pines family?”
Slyly, Mabel grinned. He knew that she would.
They formulated a crude plan in mostly pantomime, and then Mabel stood up with an exaggerated stretch. “Man, I really gotta pee,” she said, loudly enough that Dipper struggled not to roll his eyes. “Be right back, Dip.” She tromped off into the trees to her left while Dipper kept his gaze nominally on the fire. Mabel had some advantages over him, being lighter and sneakier than he could manage, and she could provide the distraction that would let him apprehend the guy. Thing. Whatever it was. It didn’t matter. It was about to be in big trouble.
His cue came with a shrill “HEY! You looking for us?!” called from two dozen feet into the woods. He saw Mabel jump out from behind her own tree, gesturing wildly in the air before his view was obstructed as she moved. “Hey, creep! Yeah, that’s right, I’m over here now!”
Dipper thought he heard a second voice in response to that, but didn’t take the time to listen. He was already up and running.
He dashed behind the nearest tree and then the next, eyes intent on the one he knew was hiding his quarry. As he came up behind it, Mabel growled, “Fight me, guy.” Finally, Dipper could see the bastard from behind. Just the shape of someone, tall, thin, male, wearing what looked like a cape. Mabel was barely visible over his shoulder, jumping around crazily and brandishing her fists. “Fight me! Come on, I dare you.”
The guy started to say, “I don’t want to fi –”
But Dipper was already on him. “That’s great to hear, dude,” he grunted as he snagged a handful of the stranger’s cape and pulled him backward, eliciting a small choked noise. “Let’s talk instead.” He swung the man around, realizing only too late that his trajectory happened to include a particularly large tree. The side of the stranger’s head bashed against the trunk with more force than Dipper had intended, and he slumped down to the ground with a groan of pain. Dipper felt bad, but not enough that he didn’t take the opportunity to straddle him across the legs, bundling a handful of cape in one fist and using the other to brandish his knife.
There was a second, before he spoke, when the man raised his face into the dim firelight and Dipper realized that he wasn’t really a man at all, but a kid just about his own age. He had around six inches on him, a beak of a nose, a trickle of blood running down his temple, and a very scared expression, but it hardly registered in the face of Dipper’s own fear for himself and his sister. He adjusted his grip on the knife in his right hand.
The stranger saw him do so, and stuttered, “J-Jesus Christ.”
“I have no idea who you are,” Dipper panted, tugging the cape upward to pull its wearer with it, “but why the hell are you following us?”
The kid’s eyes went wide. “F-following you?” he gasped incredulously. “N-no, we – we –”
Whatever he would have said, it was interrupted by two screams. The first was Mabel’s. “Dipper!” she cried, and he turned his face up. “Look out!”
The second shout came from his other side, a furious bellow that he didn’t understand at all: “Wirt!” What on Earth did that mean? It wasn’t even a word. He turned away from his sister to the source of the noise. Sprinting between the trees toward him were two shapes. One had a skull for a face, and carried itself as if holding a gun. The other was tall, violently auburn, and brandishing a wooden baseball bat. For just a second, he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Wendy?” he asked, without realizing what he’d said.
“Wendy this,” grunted the girl who, it seemed obvious now, was not Wendy at all, as she swung the baseball bat toward his head.
He tried to duck, but not quickly enough. The last thing Dipper saw before his vision went white with pain was Mabel leaping toward him over tree roots, eyes wide and mouth screaming, and then he fell.
--