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Dipper had been the one to find the VHS tape. Technically.
He had been the one to spot it, at least. Mabel had been the one to make it visible by knocking over a stack of books in a particularly excellent swing during their game of makeshift indoor mini golf.
Dipper dusted off the tape to read what it said; an ultimately useless endeavor, as it wasn’t labeled at all.
“What do you think it is?” Mabel asked him. “A really old movie?”
“I feel like if it were a movie, it would have some kind of title written on it.”
“We should watch it and find out!”
She ran over to the television and sifted through the many wires to see if she could find a way to play the tape.
“Mabel, I doubt Grunkle Stan even owns a VHS playe-”
“Found it!”
“Alright,” he acquiesced, handing her the tape.
She wound it up and stuck it in the player.
Neither of them were prepared for what they saw when Mabel hit play.
It was Stan, only a much younger version of him from well before they were born. Except it wasn’t Stan, not really. It was his body, but his pupils were slits, and the whites of his eyes weren’t white at all but yellow instead.
The twins shared a look of horror.
“Welcome back to puppet hour with Bill!” the man who was but wasn’t Stan greeted the viewers, which in this case was Dipper and Mabel. “Say hi, kids!”
“MABEL, TURN IT OFF!” Dipper screamed. He was rocking back and forth, wide-eyed and terrified.
“Today’s puppet is-”
Mabel switched the television off.
Dipper continued rocking; his lungs struggled to get air into them.
Mabel rubbed his back what she hoped was soothingly as they sat there in silence, confused and frightened by what they’d just seen.
After a minute or two, Dipper’s breathing became more even. Mabel was staring off into space, trying her best to make sense of the video.
“Grunkle Stan was…?”
“...Possessed by Bill,” Dipper finished. “Should we say something to him? I doubt he wanted us to see that. But why would he hide this from us? And why does he insist that every magical thing about this town is bogus if he knows that-”
“He’s probably trying to protect us,” Mabel reasoned.
“But we’ve fought Bill twice!”
“But Grunkle Stan doesn’t know that! He probably doesn’t want to worry us. Besides, this was, like, forever ago. Maybe Bill stopped bothering him.”
“We fought Bill inside Stan’s mind literally a couple weeks ago,” Dipper pointed out.
Mabel made a face. He had a point. “You know how you’re kinda messed up from when Bill possessed you? No offense.”
“None taken.” Dipper had been suffering from nightmares nearly every night since the terrible puppet show. And to think Grunkle Stan had also once been Bill’s puppet… Dipper had to admit he found a bit of comfort in the discovery that he wasn’t completely alone, that there was someone else who understood what he went through that day.
“Maybe it freaks him out to think about it? Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about whatever happened back then because it messed him up, too.”
“Hmm… You might be right.” As much as Dipper wanted to say something to Stan, he didn’t want to make him panic the way he himself had just moments ago.
He would leave the topic alone. For now, at least.