21Summary: ZOGRHRH ZACQ MLDA MS NMFDZH WVILHY WUFG'X KHRX RGSXNH. NUTRNZ SNETRJLR, C UHTH AHCF BW ELTNRK EQK MIEX MQAELRLXLUG ZBK CRB! IH GAMV JHUCMIU: IIFY WSHZ A XRVIQA TBVGK, DUD XVITHY GIRL XR AHY TASVA HIHLI. DSSI: JHA! DTATVGK! WOE UAMEJVNCFM GDU EHGXV GYEUZL XRV?
It was the same dream, the gold-eyed demon noted with interest. The flames licking up the wall, the sickening smell of burning meat; everything was exactly the same. It was odd, he mused, to have such a skilled recreation of a dream for the fifth night in a row. Humans didn't have the ability to dream things with such precision, and the ancient demon would bet his favorite suit that the dreams had been going on for far longer that what was in the realm of human possibility. He briefly pondered whether the young human could be a Dreamer, but dismissed the thought; the boy wasn't of Arabian descent that much Bill could see. Meanwhile, the flames reached the ceiling, and the child threw himself to the floor to protect his head and face from falling support beams.
That left only one option. Well, if you were to get complicated with it, several, but the chances of those options were less likely than humans discovering the existence of multiple gods and the ruling hierarchy, and that were, for all intents and purposes, impossible. The remaining idea that the demon had was that there was an outside force controlling the self-proclaimed 'ghost hunter's sleeping world. As the King of Dreams, Cipher figured it would be easy to find the pieces of the puzzle that didn't fit.
One of the rules with tampering with dreams was that, no matter what, the tamperer would leave their spirit mark upon the dream somewhere. Bill's spirit mark, his summoning wheel, would be located in some nondescript corner. He began to scan the burning room, the young human was nowhere in sight, something he thought of as odd. The mostly (sometimes, on the right Tuesday is the light shines the right way) omnipotent dream demon looked high and low for some calling card for what could possibly be invading the human's dreams. He was just about to give up when he looked to the center of the fiery blaze, and saw something.
Wading through the hungry flames that engulfed the room, Bill finally found the calling card he was looking for.
In the center of all of the white-hot fire, there was a puddle of saltwater and a few stalks of seaweed.
Night fell quickly, as it always seemed to in Gravity Falls. It was, after all, a town of oddities. The sun was at its lowest point, about to disappear under the horizon, but for now (or at least the next five minutes, you never knew, in Gravity Falls), the sky was painted orange, and everything seemed to glow like fire. This was Dipper's least favorite time of day. The young ghost hunter had gathered his hunting gear after waking up from the second fitful nap of the day. As he packed his supplies and put them on the porch he wondered when naps had gone from something that signified being a baby to something that most teenagers and young adults couldn't go without.
"Alright! I'm gonna leave now! Don't expect me back before tomorrow!" Dipper shouted, booking it down the stairs to the door, grabbing his hat along the way,, and had almost made it through the threshold and to his beat-up VW bug. He had just finished slipping on his beat up sneakers and was almost out the door by the time Mabel reached the front entrance.
"Hey, bro, you're going to the mystery house?" She paused, and then grinned, "The one that's haunted by a hot ghost?" She wiggled her eyebrows and laughed. "Tall, dark, and maybe evil, sounds like just your type, are you sure you're not going there for a supernatural booty call?!"
Dipper chose to be the mature one, and, blushing furiously, stuck his tongue out at her. "You're just jealous because I catch all the cute guys."
Mabel cringed, "Well, you can keep the guys, I think high school here has ruined me for every boy our age in this entire state!" She made a vague 'bleh' sound, and grinned again, and Dipper couldn't help but notice that she looked very similar to the smiling sun on her favorite sweater. "I hope you have fun doing whatever it is that you do, out there, in the woods, alone, with no one to hear you scream." The whole time she spoke, her voice grew more sinister, and then, right when Dipper was getting a little apprehensive, she shoved him out of the door and, just before slamming the door behind her, shouted "If you live to see the beautiful light of the day star, I I'll make you Stancakes!"
With those parting words Dipper loaded his box of gear and set out for the small dirt road that would take him to the old mansion.
Once there, Dipper spent the first hour and a half combing over every room and setting up all of his gear while he waited for night to fall completely. For some reason, since he had entered the house, the sky had stayed the same orange-y color, despite the fact that it was now 11:37 P.M.
He, currently, was sitting in the front room, his new base of operations, when he started to doze off. It seemed two naps a day hadn't been enough to sate his tired mind.
Right before his most recent nightmare claimed him, he swore he heard a bubbling voice whisper: "It seems like someone has been messing with my handiwork. That just won't do." But, by the time he figured out something was wrong, it was too late to wake up.
Alright, somewhere in this chapter is the passphrase for the cipher at the beginning. Good luck. New chapter should be up this weekend. Check my tumblr red-sky-night for details. As usual, if you see grammar errors, point them out, but keep it civil. Thanks, Leander