Dipper MUST become a mage, and the little emotion guys should DEFINITELY be a part of his inner journey!
Shadows of the Falls (Gravity Falls/World of Darkness)
- Thread starter Leliel
- Start date
Spoiler: Not happening in this story.
Am thinking of writing a oneshot where Riley Awakes as a Mastigos, though.
Fair enough, but I'd still hope Dipper the Mage is a possibility!
He raised a army of rampaging zombies by just reading a small spell from a book for crying out loud!
Imminent Canon Divergence Note:
I just found out that the Author is Stanford, Grunkle Stan is Stanley.
For the record, I am going to say that Stan keeps his twin's name to avoid the hassle of identity theft charges, and Ford plays along. Hence, his nickname is Grandpa/Uncle L, because the twins think it sounds cool. Because retcons are something I try to avoid.
I just found out that the Author is Stanford, Grunkle Stan is Stanley.
For the record, I am going to say that Stan keeps his twin's name to avoid the hassle of identity theft charges, and Ford plays along. Hence, his nickname is Grandpa/Uncle L, because the twins think it sounds cool. Because retcons are something I try to avoid.
Also, in bizarre and darkly humorous parallel development news:
Gamemaster enforces karma on werewolf murderhobos via Gravity Falls.
This, kids, is both a guideline to how one should treat death of actual people in the nWoD, and a truly Magnificent Bastard moment.
EDIT: Also, what's funny isn't the child death, it's the fact that that ST likes crossover from other media, and that character was Dipper all along.
And more than that? After a brief sidequest in which deals with Bill Cipher are made, spirit courts are pissed off, and Mabel is desperately avoided...nobody remembered to get Dipper's camera!
Good thing they aren't vampires. This is "just get the flamethrower now" levels of tragicomic Masquerade breach.
Gamemaster enforces karma on werewolf murderhobos via Gravity Falls.
This, kids, is both a guideline to how one should treat death of actual people in the nWoD, and a truly Magnificent Bastard moment.
EDIT: Also, what's funny isn't the child death, it's the fact that that ST likes crossover from other media, and that character was Dipper all along.
And more than that? After a brief sidequest in which deals with Bill Cipher are made, spirit courts are pissed off, and Mabel is desperately avoided...nobody remembered to get Dipper's camera!
Good thing they aren't vampires. This is "just get the flamethrower now" levels of tragicomic Masquerade breach.
Last edited:
As proof of continuing life, have a teaser!
Manly Dan gaped.
"...You're kidding, right?"
"Nope, he was bigger than you, from what I could tell," Dipper replied, still thumbing through the journal #3. "Of course, it could have been the coat. Guy said he gets cold in warm weather, don't know how thick that thing was."
"I'm more concerned about the sniper rifle," Blubs replied, brow furrowed. "Guns without permits tend to draw state inspections, and those are never fun."
"...You were audited and you kept your job?", Wendy asked, raising an eyebrow.
Durland looked down. "There's a reason he lives in my house. And why the DA was impeached."
"I know exactly how you feel," a sympathetic Stan replied.
"...Annnyway," Wendy began, looking nervous, "we got to talking, and we discover two things; one, Cadwallop was apparently a goblin, a literal fairy-I think he called them, er, Teihiihan. Been searching for them on my phone, but it's slow out here and I think I keep spelling it-"
"Got you covered," Dipper interjected, pointing to an UV-lit page of a sour-looking humanoid that may have been Cadwallop's rustic twin (seeing as how the things piercing the picture's skin all looked to be invented before plastics).
The title wasn't 'Teihiihan' though, although that word was present. The real title was 'Cannibal Dwarf.'"
There was a bit of a long pause as the adults (aside from Stan) fully processed that situation
"...Ya think they just got off on the wrong foot?" Durland asked, hopefully.
"Unfortunately, no. These guys aren't gnomes, and by the looks of it aren't even related apart from being short humanoids," Dipper said, angling the UV light to expose more. "Apparently they were real big enemies of Native American tribes who lived just east of where Idaho is now; their species names, plural, were appropriated from said tribes, Teihiihan being Arapaho for 'strong'. They think that it's normal to be born nameless and take the name of people or animals you're most proud of eating."
A shiver ran through the room.
"From what it says here, everything in the Teihiihan culture revolves around hunting," Dipper continued. "The author says that the only ones he's ever encountered are pursuing prey, going in for the kill, or eating the catch. He also says that there's no real stories of permanent Teihiihan settlements in any legend, just temporary camps, and the tribes never had any stories of negotiating with them, just protecting themselves, or tricking the Teihiihan into exposing their weak points or leaving the people alone. Even he says he was really lucky that the ones he met didn't think twelve fingers were that special."
"...Say, didn't he come back after that crashed expedition to the Isles o' Wrath?" Blubs interjected. "Maybe we could ask the man directly."
It took the Shack's employees a second to remember why Ford was currently called Grandpa L instead of, well, Ford. "Um, yeah. We could, but my brother spent several decades in an alter-animpossible-to-navigate section of the Pacific. Cell phones are a bit too new for him to buy one yet, so I can't contact him except by snail mail." Internally, Stan scolded himself for nearly forgetting his cover story in front of two cops. He didn't need criminal charges on top of being reduced to drifter-dom again when the summer ended.
"...Yeah, that's right," Dipper followed up. "While it'd be nice to bring our, uh, long-vanished adventurer grandfather in on this, it'd probably take too long to find him, and besides, he's stressed enough trying to catch up with the rest of the world."
Soos' Abuleita nodded. "I share his pain every time I see a new smartphone."
"Okay, back to the story," Mabel continued, standing up. "So, I was really mad at Ved, because, evil cannibal or not, that guy was a person...except he really wasn't, because he turned back into wood before I woke up, so I guess they're more like robots. I hope," she amended.
"So, then we finally learn that Ved's, I don't know, the giant fae equivalent to some kind of bounty hunter, and that Cadwallop had hurt his queen or something," Wendy began. "Then-"
"And then he promised to help out with the Shack seeing as how he accidentally chased the guy into my property and...that's it," Stan interrupted.
Not as subtly as he had hoped, however. Everyone looked at the great Mr. Mystery quizzically.
"What? You heard the guy, that's pretty much the way it's gonna be."
"...Mr. Pines, what about trying to talk his way around-"
"I said, you heard the guy."
"Grunkle Stan, he was also nice enough to give you that-"
"I said that's the way it's gonna be."
Dipper's brow furrowed. "Grunkle...is this about that-"
"YES!" Stan shouted, making everyone jump. "The world isn't a pulp short story where going to the former lairs of real life mad scientists still inhabited by crazy people after it turns out somethin'supernatural is goin' down results in anyone survivin' or not wishin' they hadn't!"
One could cut the tension in the air with a knife.
Slowly, Stan winced and brought a hand to his face. "And now you're gonna go no matter what I say, aren't you?"
Dipper slowly opened his mouth.
"...Wait just a little minute," Soos Abuelita cut in, her already faded complexion paling. "Are we speaking of...Bishopgate?"
"...Um, yes? I don't see why it's that scary-"
"You have NO IDEA!" Manly Dan said, eyes widened. "That...HELLHOLE should not even be SPOKEN OF!"
"Dad, what's with the-"
"We've said too much already!" Blubs put a wary hand on his taser, eyes darting furtively around. "Anyone who says anything concrete in this room about...certain medical institutions is going to spend tonight in prison."
"Guys, guys! Why's everyone so scared? All I hear about the place are those saints on the-"
"Ya mean the doors meant to keep the evil in!?" Durland countered. "All the bad vibes and potential ghosts of all those who died in serial lobotomies!?"
There was yet another moment of silence.
Wordlessly, Durland placed a pair of handcuffs around his wrists and shuffled off to a cell as Blubs glared at him.
"...Okay, what!?" Dipper held up a hand. "Look, can someone tell me exactly what went on there, and why is everyone so scared of it?"
The adults, minus Soos, looked at Blubs. "...Fine. Just don't talk about in in this police station, I don't want to jinx it more than it already is."
Everyone nodded, and made their way out the front door. Once on the sidewalk, Stan turned around to face Dan and the Abuelita.
"Want me to-"
"Be our guest, amigo."
"You brought it up, you get to suffer."
"Okay." Stan turned back to the still-ignorant residents of the town, who were starting to wonder if maybe the prohibition against talking about Bishopgate was well-advised if Dan was too chicken to talk about it.
"Kids? And Soos? Ya ever hear of how bad early mental medicine was? Back when we didn't have therapists, or actual diagnoses, or even just the idea that maybe we should ensure if we're tossing a mentally...different person in a cell to be forgotten about, it should at least be a nice cell where they can live in peace, instead treating them like animals at a zoo?"
Dipper felt a growing pit at the bottom of his stomach, as Mabel turned a little green.
"...Bishopgate's a relic of that time, isn't it?"
"Not quite. Bishopgate Asylum's the place where, back in the day, those same zoos of the insane looked down on. And I can tell you, that place today isn't that much better, but that's besides the point. If it were just a horrible place to find sanity, it'd just be ignored by the townsfolk and everyone would avoid. The fear most people here have of it though…"
"Actually, we probably need to stop by Soos' place. I suspect you're going to need some of that tea his gram makes to sit through the story of Doctors Matthew Gorlay and Jeremiah Moorcock. But to prepare you; the latter is known today for treating everything, from depression to migraines, with a lobotomy, cutting off the frontal lobes from the rest of the brain so a person can't really think any more. Of the two, he was the nice doctor."
---------------------
Manly Dan gaped.
"...You're kidding, right?"
"Nope, he was bigger than you, from what I could tell," Dipper replied, still thumbing through the journal #3. "Of course, it could have been the coat. Guy said he gets cold in warm weather, don't know how thick that thing was."
"I'm more concerned about the sniper rifle," Blubs replied, brow furrowed. "Guns without permits tend to draw state inspections, and those are never fun."
"...You were audited and you kept your job?", Wendy asked, raising an eyebrow.
Durland looked down. "There's a reason he lives in my house. And why the DA was impeached."
"I know exactly how you feel," a sympathetic Stan replied.
"...Annnyway," Wendy began, looking nervous, "we got to talking, and we discover two things; one, Cadwallop was apparently a goblin, a literal fairy-I think he called them, er, Teihiihan. Been searching for them on my phone, but it's slow out here and I think I keep spelling it-"
"Got you covered," Dipper interjected, pointing to an UV-lit page of a sour-looking humanoid that may have been Cadwallop's rustic twin (seeing as how the things piercing the picture's skin all looked to be invented before plastics).
The title wasn't 'Teihiihan' though, although that word was present. The real title was 'Cannibal Dwarf.'"
There was a bit of a long pause as the adults (aside from Stan) fully processed that situation
"...Ya think they just got off on the wrong foot?" Durland asked, hopefully.
"Unfortunately, no. These guys aren't gnomes, and by the looks of it aren't even related apart from being short humanoids," Dipper said, angling the UV light to expose more. "Apparently they were real big enemies of Native American tribes who lived just east of where Idaho is now; their species names, plural, were appropriated from said tribes, Teihiihan being Arapaho for 'strong'. They think that it's normal to be born nameless and take the name of people or animals you're most proud of eating."
A shiver ran through the room.
"From what it says here, everything in the Teihiihan culture revolves around hunting," Dipper continued. "The author says that the only ones he's ever encountered are pursuing prey, going in for the kill, or eating the catch. He also says that there's no real stories of permanent Teihiihan settlements in any legend, just temporary camps, and the tribes never had any stories of negotiating with them, just protecting themselves, or tricking the Teihiihan into exposing their weak points or leaving the people alone. Even he says he was really lucky that the ones he met didn't think twelve fingers were that special."
"...Say, didn't he come back after that crashed expedition to the Isles o' Wrath?" Blubs interjected. "Maybe we could ask the man directly."
It took the Shack's employees a second to remember why Ford was currently called Grandpa L instead of, well, Ford. "Um, yeah. We could, but my brother spent several decades in an alter-animpossible-to-navigate section of the Pacific. Cell phones are a bit too new for him to buy one yet, so I can't contact him except by snail mail." Internally, Stan scolded himself for nearly forgetting his cover story in front of two cops. He didn't need criminal charges on top of being reduced to drifter-dom again when the summer ended.
"...Yeah, that's right," Dipper followed up. "While it'd be nice to bring our, uh, long-vanished adventurer grandfather in on this, it'd probably take too long to find him, and besides, he's stressed enough trying to catch up with the rest of the world."
Soos' Abuleita nodded. "I share his pain every time I see a new smartphone."
"Okay, back to the story," Mabel continued, standing up. "So, I was really mad at Ved, because, evil cannibal or not, that guy was a person...except he really wasn't, because he turned back into wood before I woke up, so I guess they're more like robots. I hope," she amended.
"So, then we finally learn that Ved's, I don't know, the giant fae equivalent to some kind of bounty hunter, and that Cadwallop had hurt his queen or something," Wendy began. "Then-"
"And then he promised to help out with the Shack seeing as how he accidentally chased the guy into my property and...that's it," Stan interrupted.
Not as subtly as he had hoped, however. Everyone looked at the great Mr. Mystery quizzically.
"What? You heard the guy, that's pretty much the way it's gonna be."
"...Mr. Pines, what about trying to talk his way around-"
"I said, you heard the guy."
"Grunkle Stan, he was also nice enough to give you that-"
"I said that's the way it's gonna be."
Dipper's brow furrowed. "Grunkle...is this about that-"
"YES!" Stan shouted, making everyone jump. "The world isn't a pulp short story where going to the former lairs of real life mad scientists still inhabited by crazy people after it turns out somethin'supernatural is goin' down results in anyone survivin' or not wishin' they hadn't!"
One could cut the tension in the air with a knife.
Slowly, Stan winced and brought a hand to his face. "And now you're gonna go no matter what I say, aren't you?"
Dipper slowly opened his mouth.
"...Wait just a little minute," Soos Abuelita cut in, her already faded complexion paling. "Are we speaking of...Bishopgate?"
"...Um, yes? I don't see why it's that scary-"
"You have NO IDEA!" Manly Dan said, eyes widened. "That...HELLHOLE should not even be SPOKEN OF!"
"Dad, what's with the-"
"We've said too much already!" Blubs put a wary hand on his taser, eyes darting furtively around. "Anyone who says anything concrete in this room about...certain medical institutions is going to spend tonight in prison."
"Guys, guys! Why's everyone so scared? All I hear about the place are those saints on the-"
"Ya mean the doors meant to keep the evil in!?" Durland countered. "All the bad vibes and potential ghosts of all those who died in serial lobotomies!?"
There was yet another moment of silence.
Wordlessly, Durland placed a pair of handcuffs around his wrists and shuffled off to a cell as Blubs glared at him.
"...Okay, what!?" Dipper held up a hand. "Look, can someone tell me exactly what went on there, and why is everyone so scared of it?"
The adults, minus Soos, looked at Blubs. "...Fine. Just don't talk about in in this police station, I don't want to jinx it more than it already is."
Everyone nodded, and made their way out the front door. Once on the sidewalk, Stan turned around to face Dan and the Abuelita.
"Want me to-"
"Be our guest, amigo."
"You brought it up, you get to suffer."
"Okay." Stan turned back to the still-ignorant residents of the town, who were starting to wonder if maybe the prohibition against talking about Bishopgate was well-advised if Dan was too chicken to talk about it.
"Kids? And Soos? Ya ever hear of how bad early mental medicine was? Back when we didn't have therapists, or actual diagnoses, or even just the idea that maybe we should ensure if we're tossing a mentally...different person in a cell to be forgotten about, it should at least be a nice cell where they can live in peace, instead treating them like animals at a zoo?"
Dipper felt a growing pit at the bottom of his stomach, as Mabel turned a little green.
"...Bishopgate's a relic of that time, isn't it?"
"Not quite. Bishopgate Asylum's the place where, back in the day, those same zoos of the insane looked down on. And I can tell you, that place today isn't that much better, but that's besides the point. If it were just a horrible place to find sanity, it'd just be ignored by the townsfolk and everyone would avoid. The fear most people here have of it though…"
"Actually, we probably need to stop by Soos' place. I suspect you're going to need some of that tea his gram makes to sit through the story of Doctors Matthew Gorlay and Jeremiah Moorcock. But to prepare you; the latter is known today for treating everything, from depression to migraines, with a lobotomy, cutting off the frontal lobes from the rest of the brain so a person can't really think any more. Of the two, he was the nice doctor."
-----------------------
(Also, any betas good with grammar? Part of the reason I'm so slow is that the otherwise extremely competent ff.net one has a very slow phone for her computer).
Chapter 2
A/N: For any lorehounds of the nWoD, here's my first big break with the canon: The location of Bishopgate!
Also, there was a fan theory I had that was invalidated by A Tale of Two Stans! Can you spot the retcon patch job?
From there, it was to the police station, mostly because there was only so much hiking Blubs could do in a day sans donuts, and they needed to give a statement anyway.
In the middle of their statement, both Blubs and Durland got another donut.
"So, let me get this straight," Blubs muttered, rubbing his own forehead. "You had an angry dwarf attack you."
"That's what we said."
"After he tried to eat a monkey."
"You got it, dude."
"And this has nothing to do with your brother?"
Stan rose an eyebrow. "Er, I don't see what that has to do with Stan-"
"Because there's too much stuff that's happening!" Blubs said throwing up his arms. "First, we learn that you have a six-fingered twin brother for whom McGucket was his lab assistant, then suddenly weird stuff starts happening all the time, including being attacked by giant bats and something going on at the Northwest mansion, then suddenly all these clocks keep on going wrong and I have this huge blow-up with Steve about missing his attempting to break the record for largest thing swallowed whole-I can't even keep the order of events straight! You okay there Deputy?"
Durland, for his part, had taped an ice bag to his head as soon as the Cursed Claw of Crowowlon was mentioned. "Please don't remind me, one headache's enough."
Blubs tossed a set of earplugs to Durland. "Point is, is there any way to make this a little easier to follow? Discovering that your brother owes money to someone with a lot of minions from a distant, vaguely pulp-inspired island temple where monkeys are considered a delicacy, maybe?"
And for a while, there was no speech. None of the five had any idea what to say.
Not that they needed to say anything, because the silence was broken by Manly Dan Corduroy bursting in through the door, leaving a silhouette of himself behind. There was a brief squeak of surprise as he wrapped his arms around his daughter, blubbering as relieved parents do.
Soos' Abuelita was not far behind. Her embrace of the handyman was not nearly as all-encompassing as Dan's was, but if anything even tighter. "Ay dios mio! I came as soon as I heard-is my teddy bear alright?"
"All dudes here are a-okay, Abuelita," Soos replied, seeming as chipper as ever. "I also now know what it's like to live as a civilian in a superhero movie. People should really write about that more, it's interesting."
"Oh sweetie! I'm so overjoyed-"
"I'm not!" Dan had apparently regained his composure, and was now glowering at Stan (and it was a testament to Stan's composure that his main reaction was turning white as a bleached sheet). "What the heck were you up to!?"
Stan gulped. "W-Well, there was this exhibit-"
"An EXHIBIT!?"
"Not a bomb! Or anything that looked like-"
"Then WHAT!? I let Wendy stay here because it was SAFER than the Junior Lumberjack Scouts! Now you're dealing with-"
"Dad, calm down! Nobody here's at fault!"
"Then WHAT IS!?" Manly Dan nearly screamed. "PERSON, THING, PLACE, I DON'T CARE WHAT NOUN IT IS, I WANT SOMETHING I CAN PUNCH FOR PUTTING-"
"The thing that caused it is dead!" Dipper blurted out.
There was a long pause as Dan's brain cooled off to fully process this information. "...Oh. What was it then?"
"A crazy dwarf that tried to eat a monkey, then Soos," Wendy replied, flatly.
There was a longer pause as both parents' brains tried to find a place to begin processing that.
"...Is anybody else expecting jerks in red hoodies to show up now?" Dan muttered as he massaged his neck. "Something doesn't feel...complete, almost."
Soos' Abuelita glanced at the car. "Should we go to mi house for this? This sounds like something that requires cookies."
"Are you okay with abnormally flat donuts?"
--------------------
"...You're kidding, right?"
"Nope, he was bigger than you, from what I could tell," Dipper replied, still thumbing through the journal #3. "Of course, it could have been the coat. Guy said he gets cold in warm weather, don't know how thick that thing was."
"I'm more concerned about the sniper rifle," Blubs replied, brow furrowed. "Guns without permits tend to draw state inspections, and those are never fun."
"...You were audited and you kept your job?", Wendy asked, raising an eyebrow.
Durland looked down. "There's a reason he lives in my house. And why the DA was impeached."
"I know exactly how you feel," a sympathetic Stan replied.
"...Annnyway," Wendy began, looking nervous, "we got to talking, and we discover two things; one, Cadwallop was apparently a goblin, a literal fairy-I think he called them, er, Teihiihan. Been searching for them on my phone, but it's slow out here and I think I keep spelling it-"
"Got you covered," Dipper interjected, pointing to an UV-lit page of a sour-looking humanoid that may have been Cadwallop's rustic twin (seeing as how the things piercing the picture's skin all looked to be invented before plastics).
The title wasn't 'Teihiihan' though, although that word was present. The real title was 'Cannibal Dwarf.'"
There was a bit of a long pause as the adults (aside from Stan) fully processed that situation
"...Ya think they just got off on the wrong foot?" Durland asked, hopefully.
"Unfortunately, no. These guys aren't gnomes, and by the looks of it aren't even related apart from being short humanoids," Dipper said, angling the UV light to expose more. "Apparently they were real big enemies of Native American tribes who lived just east of where Idaho is now; their species names, plural, were appropriated from said tribes, Teihiihan being Arapaho for 'strong'. They think that it's normal to be born nameless and take the name of people or animals you're most proud of eating."
A shiver ran through the room.
"From what it says here, everything in the Teihiihan culture revolves around hunting," Dipper continued. "The author says that the only ones he's ever encountered are pursuing prey, going in for the kill, or eating the catch. He also says that there's no real stories of permanent Teihiihan settlements in any legend, just temporary camps, and the tribes never had any stories of negotiating with them, just protecting themselves, or tricking the Teihiihan into exposing their weak points or leaving the people alone. Even he says he was really lucky that the ones he met didn't think twelve fingers were that special."
"...Say, didn't he come back after that crashed expedition to the Isles o' Wrath?" Blubs interjected. "Maybe we could ask the man directly."
It took the Shack's employees a second to remember why Ford was currently called Grandpa L instead of, well, Ford. "Um, yeah. We could, but my brother spent several decades in an alter-an impossible-to-navigate section of the Pacific. Cell phones are a bit too new for him to buy one yet, so I can't contact him except by snail mail." Internally, Stan scolded himself for nearly forgetting his cover story in front of two cops. He didn't need criminal charges on top of being reduced to drifter-dom again when the summer ended.
"...Yeah, that's right," Dipper followed up. "While it'd be nice to bring our, uh, long-vanished adventurer grandfather in on this, it'd probably take too long to find him, and besides, he's stressed enough trying to catch up with the rest of the world."
Soos' Abuelita nodded. "I share his pain every time I see a new smartphone."
"Okay, back to the story," Mabel continued, standing up. "So, I was really mad at Ved, because, evil cannibal or not, that guy was a person...except he really wasn't, because he turned back into wood before I woke up, so I guess they're more like robots. I hope," she amended.
"So, then we finally learn that Ved's, I don't know, the giant fae equivalent to some kind of bounty hunter, and that Cadwallop had hurt his queen or something," Wendy began. "Then-"
"And then he promised to help out with the Shack seeing as how he accidentally chased the guy into my property and...that's it," Stan interrupted.
Not as subtly as he had hoped, however. Everyone looked at the great Mr. Mystery quizzically.
"What? You heard the guy, that's pretty much the way it's gonna be."
"...Mr. Pines, what about trying to talk his way around-"
"I said, you heard the guy."
"Grunkle Stan, he was also nice enough to give you that-"
"I said that's the way it's gonna be."
Dipper's brow furrowed. "Grunkle...is this about that-"
"YES!" Stan shouted, making everyone jump. "The world isn't a pulp short story where going to the former lairs of real life mad scientists still inhabited by crazy people after it turns out somethin' supernatural is goin' down results in anyone survivin' or not wishin' they hadn't!"
One could cut the tension in the air with a knife.
Slowly, Stan winced and brought a hand to his face. "And now you're gonna go no matter what I say, aren't you?"
Dipper slowly opened his mouth.
"...Wait just a little minute," Soos Abuelita cut in, her already faded complexion paling. "Are we speaking of...Bishopgate?"
"...Um, yes? I don't see why it's that scary-"
"You have NO IDEA!" Manly Dan said, eyes widened. "That...HELLHOLE should not even be SPOKEN OF!"
"Dad, what's with the-"
"We've said too much already!" Blubs put a wary hand on his taser, eyes darting furtively around. "Anyone who says anything concrete in this room about...certain medical institutions is going to spend tonight in prison."
"Guys, guys! Why's everyone so scared? All I hear about the place are those saints on the-"
"Ya mean the doors meant to keep the evil in!?" Durland countered. "All the bad vibes and potential ghosts of all those who died in serial lobotomies!?"
There was yet another moment of silence.
Wordlessly, Durland placed a pair of handcuffs around his wrists and shuffled off to a cell as Blubs glared at him.
"...Okay, what!?" Dipper held up a hand. "Look, can someone tell me exactly what went on there, and why is everyone so scared of it?"
The adults, minus Soos, looked at Blubs. "...Fine. Just don't talk about in in this police station, I don't want to jinx it more than it already is."
Everyone nodded, and made their way out the front door. Once on the sidewalk, Stan turned around to face Dan and the Abuelita.
"Want me to-"
"Be our guest, amigo."
"You brought it up, you get to suffer."
"Okay." Stan turned back to the still-ignorant residents of the town, who were starting to wonder if maybe the prohibition against talking about Bishopgate was well-advised if Dan was too chicken to talk about it.
"Kids? And Soos? Ya ever hear of how bad early mental medicine was? Back when we didn't have therapists, or actual diagnoses, or even just the idea that maybe we should ensure if we're tossing a mentally...different person in a cell to be forgotten about, it should at least be a nice cell where they can live in peace, instead treating them like animals at a zoo?"
Dipper felt a growing pit at the bottom of his stomach, as Mabel turned a little green.
"...Bishopgate's a relic of that time, isn't it?"
"Not quite. Bishopgate Asylum's the place where, back in the day, those same zoos of the insane looked down on. And I can tell you, that place today isn't that much better, but that's besides the point. If it were just a horrible place to find sanity, it'd just be ignored by the townsfolk and everyone would avoid. The fear most people here have of it though…"
"Actually, we probably need to stop by Soos' place. I suspect you're going to need some of that tea his gram makes to sit through the story of Doctors Matthew Gorlay and Jeremiah Moorcock, and I'm gonna need a couple props. But to prepare you; the latter is known today for treating everything, from depression to migraines, with a lobotomy, cutting off the frontal lobes from the rest of the brain so a person can't really think any more. Of the two, he was the nice doctor."
The tea was a special recipe of Soos' Abuelita, Well, to the extent anything that partially came in an easy-make box (just add water, leave on stove) could be the recipe of anyone who bought it, but she customized it in a pretty skillful way.
It was certainly good for calming nausea and nerves. Probably why what had to be the world's largest pot was sitting conveniently on the table, given the subject of the matter.
"So kids," Stan began, attempting to smile. "Where do we start?"
"How it was built," Dipper said, tea at the ready. "The journal says all fae tend to lair around locations symbolically significant to begin with, and if we're fending off Native American cannibal goblins, I'd really like to know if the problem's deeper than either of the doctors."
"As much as I would love to be actually skeptical of that point, it wouldn't be surprising." Stan leaned back in his chair. "Let's start off the fact that the place was built on a, no joke, Indian burial ground."
Wendy spat out her tea. "S-seriously!? That cliche actually happens!?"
"Well, not as much as the old movies would have you believe, but it does, and in my years safeguarding the Shack, I've learned that the guys who didn't watch those flicks often get their butts kicked by angry postmortem owners.
"But here's the thing-back when it was still considered safe to talk about the place, I did some digging to see what kind of exhibits I could make in the name of the place, and I discovered something very interesting; what we today think of burial mounds? Yeah, people who made them didn't live around Oregon, not generally. So it's entirely possible the place was built on something that looked like a burial mound, but was actually something the natives wanted to get rid of."
"Yeah, I'm looking that mound up right now," Wendy said, her phone out. "The Greater Chawkamas Area Mound, it's called-lot of historian dudes are really confused by it. Wait, here's something," she said as she hit the zoom key a couple times, "Apparently the Would-Be Cabinet of Dr. Caligari over there isn't the first time someone's had the bright idea to build something on there. It's never worked out."
"Never worked out is an understatement. I hear the Spaniards that first settled there started a small war against the local Chinook to force them to take their land back after the fourth flood in three months. That's what convinced me to stay far, far away from the place if I wanted to live, but I'm digressin'. Point is, something was wrong with that land long before Bishopgate came, and neither of its most infamous residents helped."
"So anyway," Stan continued, "Bishopgate itself, or at least the East Wing, is actually a converted mansion-used to belong to some Lousiana guy, I think his name was Teesdale or somethin' weird like that. After he died, some two-bit big city idiot named Dr. Hopper came along, bought the whole place for a dollar without wonderin' why, and turn the darn place into a general hospital. Then the Civil War broke out, and it ended up being a veteran's hospital for four years despite Hopper loudly arguin' with them every other week. Apart from that, everythin' seemed to be going okay, barrin' some poor Union guys who had horrible nightmares involving, and I quote, 'the devil himself had put the sky to the torch and stolen our names,' then around 1870, something goes wrong."
"Angry Indian ghosts possessed all the soldiers who ever stayed there and tried to eat everyone's brains?" Soos guessed. "'Cause there was this movie I saw once-"
"Not anythin' so blatant. Though that'd probably be less creepy." Stan sipped the tea. "See, around the Fall of 1870, Hopper suddenly vanishes from the county for a while, leaving a guy named Cave in his place. A few months later, Hopper comes back-and get this, his hair's white as snow after it's been bleached."
Mabel rose a hand. "Um, Grunkle, I really don't wanna upset anyone, but how old was he? I mean, hair losing it's color isn't-"
"41, actually. And he wasn't even going grey."
"Oh. Maybe he just aged badly-not like you or Abuelita, of course."
"Yeah, that's what I was thinkin' too. But here's another thing-he doesn't take his job back from Cave. Not officially, but when Cave's really going into the work of turning Bishopgate into a full asylum, even having a system for how good you'll be treated on the basis of how much you paid him, Hopper's completely unable to speak up. In fact, Hopper doesn't even offer his own opinions anymore, he just goes along with whatever Cave says. Now, I'm all for friendship, but somebody's gotta disagree someday. Particularly when ya spent four years of your life fighting authority to get your business back."
"Now, things start gettin' a little weirder for Bishopgate from there on, a little creepier. First, some horse spooks for reasons nobody has any idea about and tramples Cave to death. Then, Hopper dies of a heart attack. The next director, a guy named Brake, rebuilds and upgrades the place after some fire nearly burns it down, but as soon as it's completed he tells the crew to seal off the new sub-basement he was really pushin' before. Then he's found...you might wanna have tea ready for this one...with a new, ahem, killer necktie."
Dipper paled a bit. "...are you saying he hanged himself!?"
"Maybe? I dunno. Could be the ghosts decided to reenact the Old West to see what it was like from the other guys' side, if it really is a burial ground." Stan gulped the remainder of his tea before a quick refill. "Anyway, just seemingly mundane oogie boogie going on, director after that guy got strangled by a patient-then around 1920, Farnsworth Weaver comes along. Tell me, does that name sound familiar for any medicine?"
There was brief silence before Soos' raised his hand. "Oh, oh! I know! Weaver, as in those dudes who make that hand soap. How's the jingle-Oh yeah! Herme-Clean, sick ain't your scene-"
"No no no no NO! If I hear that song again I'm gonna need brain surgery to get it out!" Wendy cut in, pulling her cap over her ears.
"You should have heard what I came up with! I specifically got a loan to research-sorry, bit of nostalgia there." Stan cleared his throat. "Anyway, Weaver decides that since the place is nearly broke, he might as well buy it out, make it into a place for his company to start makin' inroads into psych research. Except he wasn't a doctor, he just inherited a company which had a lot of them on payroll."
"So, that's where Dr. Matthew Gorlay comes in, as the new head of Medicine-slash-actual head shrink. If that name sounds kind of like a horror movie villain, he lived down to it. I can swear on authority there was somethin' off with Dr. Gorlay."
Stan inhaled a bit. "First, you have to understand; Gorlay didn't seem that bad by the standards of the day. Back then, eugenics was the order of the day. For future reference kids, that's treating people like breedin' dogs; you find the qualities you want and let those guys have kids to pass on those traits and preventing the rest from doing so."
Mabel furrowed her brow. "That's kinda...cold, isn't it? Treating people you can talk to like pets?"
"Oh, you have no idea. But back in the day, it was considered humane to the human race to ensure future generations would have less genetic diseases. It didn't really work out, both because what you get from your parents isn't the end-all be-all, and that pretty soon led to people thinkin' that people who didn't look like them were problems that needed to be solved-see World War 2 for where that kind of thinkin' leads. But this was ten years before the Nazis even got power in the first place, and twenty years before they decided what they really wanted was to conquer the world. So when the doctor approaches his boss with the idea of making it so that the really ill patients, the ones who end up scribbling on the walls at best, can't have children? Nobody, and I mean nobody, blinks an eye."
Soos felt a growing pit at the bottom of his stomach. "This is gonna be like one of those movies where it turns out he turns out to doin' mad science to his patients, isn't it boss?"
"Well, given how he died before most of those movies came out? He could be considered a real pioneer in the field of horrifyin' surgery." Stan took another large gulp. "See, when one of his patients with Down syndrome-that's this really nasty type of genetic brain damage-died of brain bleedin' when Dr. Gorlay was out on a lecture tour, they brought in this other doctor, Werner, as a coroner. What he found was that the guy had been operated on fourteen times in the year before. What killed him was Gorlay messing up a second lobotomy."
There was a long silence after that, punctuated only by tea being gulped down.
"..So, that cheerful fact having come to light, Werner looks further into Gorlay's notes, and discovers he'd been involved directly in the deaths of over 300 patients, and another 150 were permanently injured so by him mucking around in their bodies. It's not pretty what he'd been doing to them either. Organ swaps, nerve cutting, electric shocks-it's like he viewed the asylum as his personal playground. And here's another thing; Weaver was in on it!"
"...Please tell me Gorlay was lying to him," Dipper said, looking queasy.
"I wish! I wouldn't put the idea he was being blackmailed out of mind, but it's more likely Weaver saw the fact that his doctor didn't really do things without purpose. He made a lot of discoveries in his day, lot of breakthroughs-which meant more prestige for his boss, and more prestige means more money. Of course, it also turns out Weaver broke the first and only real rule of business; never steal money from your own company. When the story broke, Weaver was thrown in the slammer and Gorlay followed him. He died pretty soon after that-couldn't stand being disgraced."
Stan paused for a short while after that, which Soos' Abuelita took to refill the tea-and not coincidentally, to allow Stan's audience to use the bathroom.
After the Shack's employees returned, Stan began again, inhaling deeply to steel himself. "Right, after Gorlay got booted out, Bishopgate basically sits bankrupt and empty for a few years until Weaver kicks the bucket just before World War 2 starts up. Dr. Werner, not having gotten another job during the Great Depression, decides that hey, you can always try again, and buys it in the bank auction, since Weaver didn't have any heirs-guy hated his cousins. Werner sits on it for a few years, sprucin' it up, until just after Germany surrenders, and he repurposes it as a veteran's hospital again. He doesn't do half-bad, and he makes some real big strides towards treating combat stress successfully, even got the Key to the City from Gravity Falls and a medal from the Army. And then: He retires."
"I'm gonna take a guess here and say that's where the other mad scientist dude was hired," Soos said, looking unfazed.
"Got it in one, Soos. Yep, Dr. Jeremiah 'Jerry' Moorcock, and even before he retired Werner smelled a nutcase. The only reason he became the director was that the trustees (those are basically the hospital's fund managers) thought his credentials looked shiny. So, anyway, Moorcock goes back to the bad old days and turns Bishopgate back into an insane asylum, and while he's nowhere near as nasty as Gorlay was on a good day, he's one of the more callous people Bishopgate ever had as a director. And of course, the fact he was one of the last great lobotomizers; Wendy, look up a girl named Allison Purchase sometime."
"Way ahead of you," she muttered as she hit the 'enter' button on her phone. "Says that she was at the center of a scandal that Wikipedia says was one of the really big things that turned people off on cutting out bits of other people's brains."
"And a good example of why you don't do drugs, kids," Stan tried to laugh. "See, Purchase was completely and utterly normal, she just overdosed on this thing called LSD. She was sent to Bishopgate because her parents were too far in denial to realize that they drove her to use drugs and convinced themselves she was having a nervous breakdown or somethin'. When the LSD wore off and she realized she was in a padded room, she freaked out and tore up her cell, at which point Moorcock, being too darn lazy to bother checking if someone is actually crazy or not, assumes she's untreatable and.." Stan made a pair of scissors with his right hand and mimed cutting at something behind his forehead.
"...That's awful," both of the twins said simultaneously. Wendy and Soos said nothing, but their expressions made clear they thought the same thing.
"Did he at least feel bad about it?" Mabel continued, now looking quite ill.
"Actually yeah, he did. Didn't stop him from fending off a lawsuit or not cutting forebrains. They say Allison spent the rest of her life there, unable to take care of herself without part of her mind. But that's where Bishopgate starts to get creepy again." Stan leaned forward. "Just over a year later, Jerry finishes his day, bids his assistants bye...and when they come back half an hour later, Jerry's had his forebrain cut."
For a moment, nobody said anything, though that had more to do with a strange rattling that, on further examination, turned out to be the otherwise silent Abuelita's own cup trembling against a plate. "Sorry," she almost-whispered. "First time I hear this. I knew something had happened, but...dios mio."
"Don't blame ya. Trustees tried to keep that part of the story on the hush-hush. Didn't want any scandals from any investigations, if you ask me." Stan cleared his throat. "Anyway, when Moorcock wakes up, it turns out he's reacted in a pretty strange way to; while most people with their forebrains cut kinda become like full-grown babies, Moorcock's still quite capable of talkin' and doing complex tasks. Thing is, he doesn't talk so much as rave. He spends all day muttering about 'angels in the moon' and how God's gonna make everything a utopia or somethin'-which is even weirder, because, before the lobotomy, Moorcock was an outspoken atheist. He hated the very concept of doomsday, thought people used it as an excuse to avoid doin' anything to make the world a better place. After he's found, he can preach about the end of the world with the best of 'em."
"Of course, he can't run an asylum if he sounds like one of the patients, so he gets shipped off somewhere east. Might be there still, for all I know." Stan let out a breath. "Anyway, that's the history lesson on Bishopgate. It's remained pretty miserable from there on, there was even a murder there by a director at one point-but it's all mundane misery, far as I can see. Up until now, at any rate."
There was a final draining of the tea cups, followed by all present making sure they didn't need to use the restroom for more than just bladder overcapacity. When the test came up a negative, Dipper was the first to break the silence. "Okay, that aside...why did Blubs say he didn't want people talking about it near him? That kind of scared isn't due to history, not alone."
"You know, if my employees keep on figuring out where I'm going to go with these things, part of me wonders if I even need to say anything. You'd be right of course-the latest weird thing to come out of that place was four years ago."
With that, Stan pulled out a tape recorder from his back pocket. "I specifically made this to convince myself I wasn't goin' crazy myself."
With that, he pressed play.
While the simple nature of cassette tapes made the contents grainy, all attending could definitely make out a faint, quiet noise like ruffling papers and adjusting chairs. After a few seconds of that there was a male voice humming to itself, shortly before a sigh.
"Allison," said the voice, a soft tone with a distinct East Coast accent, "We can't have you talking nonsense. If you keep on with this, we're going to have to take more drastic measures. Do you want that?"
The recording ended with a quiet click. "And before you ask," Stan said, putting down the player as far away from him as he could reach, "After that happened I buzzed by the library's computer to listen to a recording of pre-surgery Jerry Moorcock. That's him alright."
The eyes of everyone else in the room went wide as saucers.
"Basically, what happened was that for a month or so, anyone who talked about Bishopgate got that on their answerin' machine or something similar; Abuelita got a letter containing some of Gorlay's notes about a guy who literally couldn't be quiet, Dan got a sign on the door of that shed of his sayin' 'MANIC, DO NOT ENGAGE IN CONVERSATION'-basically, if ya said anything, you were told in a roundabout way to clam up. It stopped after about a month, but up until then there was so much of it even those Blind Eye jerks you told me about probably couldn't keep up. Really, it fed on itself, kinda-people kept on wonderin' why they got those threats when they talked about Bishopgate, so they decided to swap opinions about the place just to see for themselves. At the end of the month, Blubs decided to hold a public speech about it to see what would happen if he really defied the threat."
"...Wait," Wendy began, eyes widening even further. "Are you saying...that Durland-"
"Nah, he's always been like that," Stan cut in, much to his cashier's relief. "But that doesn't change the fact that he had some slides prepared, but the first picture got replaced by…" Stan pulled out a photograph. "This."
A brief pause. And then;
"AAAAAGH!"
"MY EYES! MY POOR, CUTE EYES!"
"BOSS, WHY DID YOU HAVE TO SHOW THAT!?"
"I DESERVE HAZARD PAY FOR THAT."
"Sorry, but it was probably the best way to show you." Mercifully, Stan threw the offending photo on the fire. "Suffice to say, Dr. Gorlay could be a real creep at times."
"So anyway, from that day on, pretty much everybody who was there, which means pretty much everyone affected by the month-long curse, swore not to speak of it lest it escalate further into someone getting hurt. I think there's probably someone more earthly that was doin' the threats given how they never happened again, but I realized whoever had the resources and obsession to pull that off probably wouldn't hesitate to hurt anyone who didn't heed those threats."
Slowly, Dipper lowered one of the hands covering his eyes. "And that's why you don't want anyone to go to Bishopgate."
"You got that right. And why you're not, unless I'm goin' and I'm not goin' unless you have a really good reason why."
"Whaddya mean, 'they won't stop comin''!?"
Dipper looked over the journal #2, having somehow convinced his great-uncle to let him borrow it for a while. "Yeah, I've been looking over the notes Ford made on the fae, and before you ask, I'm still not pretending he's the one named Stanley in private. Back to my point, it looks like Teihiihan are part of a class of fae that need to be specifically banned from entry into the human world. If the ban is damaged, well…"
"...How can you touch a restraining order, much less hurt it?"
"Well, not the legal language of the ban itself," Dipper began, flipping to an earlier page. "But a lot of pledges-mystically enforced fae deals and laws-do have physical items they're sworn on. If the symbol is ruined in some way…" He shrugged.
Stan began to rub his nose. "...Okay, so I'm gonna guess you think that whatever this 'item' is, it's around that place. First of all, what makes you think-"
"That this isn't an exception to that rule?" Dipper cleared his throat. "'From what I have discovered from credible sources-'"
"Define 'credible.' There's a hunk of bunk in the world surrounding the weird, take it from a source of it-"
"Grunkle Stan, you grew up with Ford. Do you really think he isn't the kind of person who fact checks everything he puts in a work of his? Twice?"
Stan looked thoughtful for a second. "...Point taken. Continue."
"'According to credible sources, any ban a variety of Huntsmen suffer that bars them from Earth is generally based around a cautionary tale that prohibits them from attacking until the rules of the story are violated. As a result, heroes who ban them generally find things that aren't likely to be violated if they're forgotten, not trusting the memory of people in general or the telephone effect.'"
Stan caught on. "...You think that somthin' happened at the old asylum that let them back."
"Exactly. And if they're trying to set up a camp here, things are only going to get more dangerous the more of them immigrate here."
Stan bit his cheek and thought on it. On the one hand, more Teihiihan meant more danger for the twins and the Shack. On the other, Stan still was far from convinced the person behind The Photo (which deserved those capital letters) wasn't any less dangerous than a hunting party of insane dwarves. Or much less supernatural in nature, given how fairies in general were involved; it probably wouldn't be hard at all to hide pointy ears and get a job at the place.
"...So, we'll hunker down, figure out a way to ward em' off. I'm pretty sure we don't have any other examples of those 'token' thing, and I don't think we or the town is going to be on their radar for new catches. Really, I think Cadwallop was kind of desperate about getting a new name; Soos isn't exactly the kind of guy who'd be a fight worth talking about."
"...Point." Dipper admitted. "But on the other hand, you tend to buy up a lot of junk, and from what Ved said we can't tell if something is a token until more Teihiihan try to steal it. And let's face it, we may be okay, but I don't think the forest creatures are. I mean, the Gremlobin has that gaze of his, but it's easy enough to avoid to the point where hunting him isn't suicide. And I don't think most of the creatures they'd be after are as lethal as he is."
Stan was severely tempted to point out that humans were not the various monsters of Gravity Falls, and especially not his family and friends. But they were Dipper's friends, many of them, so he decided it was wiser to keep his mouth shut on that item of xenophobic cynicism. "...Could I put one last argument forward?" Stan began. "Somebody's on the case already, and I think Ved's probably better at doing his job than we are. He probably has buds that are also better at it than we are, so maybe would should-"
A familiar cough sounded from the back doorway of the Shack. "Grunkle Stan?", Mabel began. "You sure you were hearing the guy? I mean, listening not just to what he said but how he was saying it?"
Stan turned around, looking confused.
"I mean on the tail end of his big 'I want to tell you, but if I don't play nice with the chief I'm gonna be in big trouble' speech? You know, 'ze whole completely coincident loyalty pledge'?"
"...And?" Stan asked, already dreading the answer.
"Well, if he has the ability to make a promise unbreakable on pain of big trouble, why didn't he do that?"
A second later, Stan heard the distinctive slap of Dipper facepalming.
"You think he was usin' reverse psychology on us?"
"I don't know what that means, but if it's 'saying the opposite of what you want in the hopes someone will do it', I guess so." Mabel tapped her chin. "From the sound of it, whoever Ved's boss is, he's really scared of anything that threatens secrecy in any way. Maybe he's a tyrant. maybe he's just a bit too safety-minded for his own good, maybe those web stories Soos hates were right about the humans being jerks to elves, but by the sound of it, he's not the kind of person who can ask for help no matter how much he or his friends really need it. Then orders his friends not to ask for help."
There was a very long pause as Stan thought on this.
The twins would want to go even if they didn't already; the mysterious Chawkamas Mound and the strange events it was likely behind was exactly the kind of weird that drew his niece and nephew like moths to flame, and discovering at least one person was in big trouble due to the mystery was like pouring gas on the open flame. On the other, it was still open flame, in the form of not just the person behind The Photo, but also short and angry serial killers…
And unless someone doused the flame, it would spread and put all of the town, including the twins, in danger. One the designated firefighter didn't think he could put out.
"You win," he groaned. "But we're only going to investigate until the Shack is refurbished enough to reopen in about a week. Should be a couple days after Ford gets back. And we're taking backup."
"Backup?", both Pines twins asked simultaneously.
Wendy slammed her magazine shut and threw it on the table. "I'm sorry, I just heard my boss say we're going to a haunted insane asylum? Please tell me that just came out wrong."
"Actually yeah. I said the possibly haunted insane asylum." Stan tried to laugh. "Maybe it has a resident nutjob instead. Er, the kind looks sane, actually has a shed full of dismembered body parts."
"Nuh-uh. No way Jose." Wendy sat back, crossing her arms. "Crazy people? I'm cool with. Ghosts? I've dealt with them, no worries. Crazy people and ghosts, with a significant portion being the ghosts of crazy people? Ha ha, no."
"Actually," Dipper began, tapping his fingers together. "Most, er, mentally unique people aren't hostile or even that non-functional-"
"Most is not all, dude," Wendy interrupted, pulling out her phone. "The reason I recognized Bishopgate is that one of my old teachers made us do a report on serial killers before someone figured out a way to sneak a pink slip around his tenure. My guy was in there for a while-Cameron Mueller, aka, the Gourmand Surgeon."
Dipper looked pointedly away from the phone's screen, and thus any concrete information on how a multiple murderer got both "Gourmand" and "Surgeon" as parts of his nickname. "Point taken," he said, a bit loudly. "Still, even if he died there, we-"
"Are going to be going wherever it is that enrages his unquiet spirit." Wendy sat back in her chair. "It's the way exploring a bad place always turns out for stupid teens. I am not stupid, ergo I am not going."
"Come on, Wendy," Soos began. "Employee unity and all that?"
Wendy cocked her head. "You know what, you're right! Let's say I just do your job while you're off chasing crazy dwarves-"
"It's gonna be a week until the Shack is fit for reopening, Wendy."
"...Dang."
Mabel put down her pack. "Look, I get you're scared-"
"Scared!? Ya think?!" Wendy shouted, kicking her chair away. "I don't wanna go near a haunted booby hatch to begin with, much less one likely haunted by the ghosts of angry Indians, a serial killer, and a freaking proto-Nazi! I had enough of ghosts with that convenience store, and those were just a grumpy old married couple! I slept under the bed for a week after playing through the asylum level in Noisy Mountain 2! I have no shame in admitting I am terrified, guys!"
Slowly, Wendy became aware she was leaning over the cashier desk, crushing the register. With her hat. Sheepishly, she closed the money tray. "Sorry. I just have this..thing, about hospitals, okay?"
Mabel blinked. "I..kinda figured. Well, that or you had too much caffeine." An awkward pause. "You wanna..talk about it?"
"...Not really," Wendy admitted, slumping back into her chair. "I just..I don't think I can be much help. I mean, you guys not only have a lot more practice than this than I do, it's that..well, you saw that. How much help am I going to be if I'm scared of my own shadow?"
Soos cleared his throat, awkwardly. "Is this like my birthday thing?"
"...Kinda," Wendy began, looking rather depressed now. "Look, can you just go? Please? I know it's just me being a coward, but-"
"Wendy."
The cashier in question nearly fell out of her chair. "Stan?"
The proprietor of the Mystery Shack slid behind the desk, putting his hand on her shoulder. "I'm gonna cut to the chase. I know, and I'm not gonna tell until you're ready too. But I know who you are, kid, and you're not a coward." He paused. "Lazy, unmotivated, and a bit delinquent, but you ain't a coward. Fearlessness is overrated, real guts come from the fact you are scared, but you do the job anyway. Not having fears means you're an idiot, or Gideon Gleeful."
"...and the 'but' is?" Wendy began, looking skeptical.
"Besides the fact that I just made a redundant statement, until you face your fears, you're gonna be ruled by them. Toughening up is more about bein' confident enough to say you aren't the world's whipping boy-er, girl-and that being treated as one's really not fair to anyone. Besides, fear's a good thing when it's trying to tell you if somethin' you or say, your employer is gonna do somethin' stupid." Stan winked.
Wendy hummed, thinking it over. "...pay me for this week with a bonus, and I'm in."
"I'll give you pay and Monday off."
"Done."
A moment later, Soos found his voice. "...Did Mr. Pines just...agree to paying more?"
Dipper shook his head. "So I am not seeing things. Good to know."
Stan chuckled. "Make no mistake, this isn't about me being visited by three ghosts-it's just that the Shack has a hazard pay clause and, I can tell you, Bishopgate's pretty dang hazardous." With that he lifted up his backpack. "Is there anythin' we need to do first, before we go on the world's creepiest field trip? Besides Wendy packin'?"
"Not here," Dipper said, adjusting his hat. "I've sent an email to Ford telling him what's going on-and yeah, I was surprised he knew what that was too, apparently they were testing the internet at his college."
Mabel seemed to be paying attention somewhere else at the moment. "Huh? Oh yeah, I told Candy and Grenda what we were doing, and they're gonna tell Pacifica. Possibly embellished, but they got the idea."
"Abuelita got it straight from the horse's mouth." To emphasize his point, Soos imitated a nicker and then took a bite of of some hay. Shortly before spitting it out. "That tasted a lot better in my head."
"Good." Stan did a quick check of the register's cash tray for any errant coins, then locked it. "Let the bad idea begin!"
With that, Stan, Dipper, and Soos strode out. After a short while of fighting her urge to stay behind anyway, Wendy reluctantly got to her feet as well, following them.
Mabel was the last. She was too busy wondering something.
Wendy...what happened?
A/N: Continuity note; this takes place directly after Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons. Assume later episodes simply do not exist, especially any about overall cosmology.
Except not really. Fun fact about the nWoD: The entire universe beyond Earth and the mortal plane could be a big HERE THERE BE DRAGONS banner and it would be entirely accurate.
Also, there was a fan theory I had that was invalidated by A Tale of Two Stans! Can you spot the retcon patch job?
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Chapter 2: Going to Bishopgate
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Sheriff Blubs, for all of his (many) faults as a police officer, was not stupid enough to think that an explosion was not a police matter to investigate, particularly when it involved a disappearance of four employees of the exploded business He was, however, dumb enough to get Deputy Durland to walk next to him while covering ground. Ergo, the "missing" persons ended up having to do a wide-angled search for the two-man police force of Gravity Falls (minus even less active cops who had a strangely long-lasting supply of sick days) after dragging themselves out of the woods and finding their car. Not something that improved any of their moods, given the post-unconsciousness migraines most of them had.Chapter 2: Going to Bishopgate
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From there, it was to the police station, mostly because there was only so much hiking Blubs could do in a day sans donuts, and they needed to give a statement anyway.
In the middle of their statement, both Blubs and Durland got another donut.
"So, let me get this straight," Blubs muttered, rubbing his own forehead. "You had an angry dwarf attack you."
"That's what we said."
"After he tried to eat a monkey."
"You got it, dude."
"And this has nothing to do with your brother?"
Stan rose an eyebrow. "Er, I don't see what that has to do with Stan-"
"Because there's too much stuff that's happening!" Blubs said throwing up his arms. "First, we learn that you have a six-fingered twin brother for whom McGucket was his lab assistant, then suddenly weird stuff starts happening all the time, including being attacked by giant bats and something going on at the Northwest mansion, then suddenly all these clocks keep on going wrong and I have this huge blow-up with Steve about missing his attempting to break the record for largest thing swallowed whole-I can't even keep the order of events straight! You okay there Deputy?"
Durland, for his part, had taped an ice bag to his head as soon as the Cursed Claw of Crowowlon was mentioned. "Please don't remind me, one headache's enough."
Blubs tossed a set of earplugs to Durland. "Point is, is there any way to make this a little easier to follow? Discovering that your brother owes money to someone with a lot of minions from a distant, vaguely pulp-inspired island temple where monkeys are considered a delicacy, maybe?"
And for a while, there was no speech. None of the five had any idea what to say.
Not that they needed to say anything, because the silence was broken by Manly Dan Corduroy bursting in through the door, leaving a silhouette of himself behind. There was a brief squeak of surprise as he wrapped his arms around his daughter, blubbering as relieved parents do.
Soos' Abuelita was not far behind. Her embrace of the handyman was not nearly as all-encompassing as Dan's was, but if anything even tighter. "Ay dios mio! I came as soon as I heard-is my teddy bear alright?"
"All dudes here are a-okay, Abuelita," Soos replied, seeming as chipper as ever. "I also now know what it's like to live as a civilian in a superhero movie. People should really write about that more, it's interesting."
"Oh sweetie! I'm so overjoyed-"
"I'm not!" Dan had apparently regained his composure, and was now glowering at Stan (and it was a testament to Stan's composure that his main reaction was turning white as a bleached sheet). "What the heck were you up to!?"
Stan gulped. "W-Well, there was this exhibit-"
"An EXHIBIT!?"
"Not a bomb! Or anything that looked like-"
"Then WHAT!? I let Wendy stay here because it was SAFER than the Junior Lumberjack Scouts! Now you're dealing with-"
"Dad, calm down! Nobody here's at fault!"
"Then WHAT IS!?" Manly Dan nearly screamed. "PERSON, THING, PLACE, I DON'T CARE WHAT NOUN IT IS, I WANT SOMETHING I CAN PUNCH FOR PUTTING-"
"The thing that caused it is dead!" Dipper blurted out.
There was a long pause as Dan's brain cooled off to fully process this information. "...Oh. What was it then?"
"A crazy dwarf that tried to eat a monkey, then Soos," Wendy replied, flatly.
There was a longer pause as both parents' brains tried to find a place to begin processing that.
"...Is anybody else expecting jerks in red hoodies to show up now?" Dan muttered as he massaged his neck. "Something doesn't feel...complete, almost."
Soos' Abuelita glanced at the car. "Should we go to mi house for this? This sounds like something that requires cookies."
"Are you okay with abnormally flat donuts?"
--------------------
"...You're kidding, right?"
"Nope, he was bigger than you, from what I could tell," Dipper replied, still thumbing through the journal #3. "Of course, it could have been the coat. Guy said he gets cold in warm weather, don't know how thick that thing was."
"I'm more concerned about the sniper rifle," Blubs replied, brow furrowed. "Guns without permits tend to draw state inspections, and those are never fun."
"...You were audited and you kept your job?", Wendy asked, raising an eyebrow.
Durland looked down. "There's a reason he lives in my house. And why the DA was impeached."
"I know exactly how you feel," a sympathetic Stan replied.
"...Annnyway," Wendy began, looking nervous, "we got to talking, and we discover two things; one, Cadwallop was apparently a goblin, a literal fairy-I think he called them, er, Teihiihan. Been searching for them on my phone, but it's slow out here and I think I keep spelling it-"
"Got you covered," Dipper interjected, pointing to an UV-lit page of a sour-looking humanoid that may have been Cadwallop's rustic twin (seeing as how the things piercing the picture's skin all looked to be invented before plastics).
The title wasn't 'Teihiihan' though, although that word was present. The real title was 'Cannibal Dwarf.'"
There was a bit of a long pause as the adults (aside from Stan) fully processed that situation
"...Ya think they just got off on the wrong foot?" Durland asked, hopefully.
"Unfortunately, no. These guys aren't gnomes, and by the looks of it aren't even related apart from being short humanoids," Dipper said, angling the UV light to expose more. "Apparently they were real big enemies of Native American tribes who lived just east of where Idaho is now; their species names, plural, were appropriated from said tribes, Teihiihan being Arapaho for 'strong'. They think that it's normal to be born nameless and take the name of people or animals you're most proud of eating."
A shiver ran through the room.
"From what it says here, everything in the Teihiihan culture revolves around hunting," Dipper continued. "The author says that the only ones he's ever encountered are pursuing prey, going in for the kill, or eating the catch. He also says that there's no real stories of permanent Teihiihan settlements in any legend, just temporary camps, and the tribes never had any stories of negotiating with them, just protecting themselves, or tricking the Teihiihan into exposing their weak points or leaving the people alone. Even he says he was really lucky that the ones he met didn't think twelve fingers were that special."
"...Say, didn't he come back after that crashed expedition to the Isles o' Wrath?" Blubs interjected. "Maybe we could ask the man directly."
It took the Shack's employees a second to remember why Ford was currently called Grandpa L instead of, well, Ford. "Um, yeah. We could, but my brother spent several decades in an alter-an impossible-to-navigate section of the Pacific. Cell phones are a bit too new for him to buy one yet, so I can't contact him except by snail mail." Internally, Stan scolded himself for nearly forgetting his cover story in front of two cops. He didn't need criminal charges on top of being reduced to drifter-dom again when the summer ended.
"...Yeah, that's right," Dipper followed up. "While it'd be nice to bring our, uh, long-vanished adventurer grandfather in on this, it'd probably take too long to find him, and besides, he's stressed enough trying to catch up with the rest of the world."
Soos' Abuelita nodded. "I share his pain every time I see a new smartphone."
"Okay, back to the story," Mabel continued, standing up. "So, I was really mad at Ved, because, evil cannibal or not, that guy was a person...except he really wasn't, because he turned back into wood before I woke up, so I guess they're more like robots. I hope," she amended.
"So, then we finally learn that Ved's, I don't know, the giant fae equivalent to some kind of bounty hunter, and that Cadwallop had hurt his queen or something," Wendy began. "Then-"
"And then he promised to help out with the Shack seeing as how he accidentally chased the guy into my property and...that's it," Stan interrupted.
Not as subtly as he had hoped, however. Everyone looked at the great Mr. Mystery quizzically.
"What? You heard the guy, that's pretty much the way it's gonna be."
"...Mr. Pines, what about trying to talk his way around-"
"I said, you heard the guy."
"Grunkle Stan, he was also nice enough to give you that-"
"I said that's the way it's gonna be."
Dipper's brow furrowed. "Grunkle...is this about that-"
"YES!" Stan shouted, making everyone jump. "The world isn't a pulp short story where going to the former lairs of real life mad scientists still inhabited by crazy people after it turns out somethin' supernatural is goin' down results in anyone survivin' or not wishin' they hadn't!"
One could cut the tension in the air with a knife.
Slowly, Stan winced and brought a hand to his face. "And now you're gonna go no matter what I say, aren't you?"
Dipper slowly opened his mouth.
"...Wait just a little minute," Soos Abuelita cut in, her already faded complexion paling. "Are we speaking of...Bishopgate?"
"...Um, yes? I don't see why it's that scary-"
"You have NO IDEA!" Manly Dan said, eyes widened. "That...HELLHOLE should not even be SPOKEN OF!"
"Dad, what's with the-"
"We've said too much already!" Blubs put a wary hand on his taser, eyes darting furtively around. "Anyone who says anything concrete in this room about...certain medical institutions is going to spend tonight in prison."
"Guys, guys! Why's everyone so scared? All I hear about the place are those saints on the-"
"Ya mean the doors meant to keep the evil in!?" Durland countered. "All the bad vibes and potential ghosts of all those who died in serial lobotomies!?"
There was yet another moment of silence.
Wordlessly, Durland placed a pair of handcuffs around his wrists and shuffled off to a cell as Blubs glared at him.
"...Okay, what!?" Dipper held up a hand. "Look, can someone tell me exactly what went on there, and why is everyone so scared of it?"
The adults, minus Soos, looked at Blubs. "...Fine. Just don't talk about in in this police station, I don't want to jinx it more than it already is."
Everyone nodded, and made their way out the front door. Once on the sidewalk, Stan turned around to face Dan and the Abuelita.
"Want me to-"
"Be our guest, amigo."
"You brought it up, you get to suffer."
"Okay." Stan turned back to the still-ignorant residents of the town, who were starting to wonder if maybe the prohibition against talking about Bishopgate was well-advised if Dan was too chicken to talk about it.
"Kids? And Soos? Ya ever hear of how bad early mental medicine was? Back when we didn't have therapists, or actual diagnoses, or even just the idea that maybe we should ensure if we're tossing a mentally...different person in a cell to be forgotten about, it should at least be a nice cell where they can live in peace, instead treating them like animals at a zoo?"
Dipper felt a growing pit at the bottom of his stomach, as Mabel turned a little green.
"...Bishopgate's a relic of that time, isn't it?"
"Not quite. Bishopgate Asylum's the place where, back in the day, those same zoos of the insane looked down on. And I can tell you, that place today isn't that much better, but that's besides the point. If it were just a horrible place to find sanity, it'd just be ignored by the townsfolk and everyone would avoid. The fear most people here have of it though…"
"Actually, we probably need to stop by Soos' place. I suspect you're going to need some of that tea his gram makes to sit through the story of Doctors Matthew Gorlay and Jeremiah Moorcock, and I'm gonna need a couple props. But to prepare you; the latter is known today for treating everything, from depression to migraines, with a lobotomy, cutting off the frontal lobes from the rest of the brain so a person can't really think any more. Of the two, he was the nice doctor."
--------------------
The tea was a special recipe of Soos' Abuelita, Well, to the extent anything that partially came in an easy-make box (just add water, leave on stove) could be the recipe of anyone who bought it, but she customized it in a pretty skillful way.
It was certainly good for calming nausea and nerves. Probably why what had to be the world's largest pot was sitting conveniently on the table, given the subject of the matter.
"So kids," Stan began, attempting to smile. "Where do we start?"
"How it was built," Dipper said, tea at the ready. "The journal says all fae tend to lair around locations symbolically significant to begin with, and if we're fending off Native American cannibal goblins, I'd really like to know if the problem's deeper than either of the doctors."
"As much as I would love to be actually skeptical of that point, it wouldn't be surprising." Stan leaned back in his chair. "Let's start off the fact that the place was built on a, no joke, Indian burial ground."
Wendy spat out her tea. "S-seriously!? That cliche actually happens!?"
"Well, not as much as the old movies would have you believe, but it does, and in my years safeguarding the Shack, I've learned that the guys who didn't watch those flicks often get their butts kicked by angry postmortem owners.
"But here's the thing-back when it was still considered safe to talk about the place, I did some digging to see what kind of exhibits I could make in the name of the place, and I discovered something very interesting; what we today think of burial mounds? Yeah, people who made them didn't live around Oregon, not generally. So it's entirely possible the place was built on something that looked like a burial mound, but was actually something the natives wanted to get rid of."
"Yeah, I'm looking that mound up right now," Wendy said, her phone out. "The Greater Chawkamas Area Mound, it's called-lot of historian dudes are really confused by it. Wait, here's something," she said as she hit the zoom key a couple times, "Apparently the Would-Be Cabinet of Dr. Caligari over there isn't the first time someone's had the bright idea to build something on there. It's never worked out."
"Never worked out is an understatement. I hear the Spaniards that first settled there started a small war against the local Chinook to force them to take their land back after the fourth flood in three months. That's what convinced me to stay far, far away from the place if I wanted to live, but I'm digressin'. Point is, something was wrong with that land long before Bishopgate came, and neither of its most infamous residents helped."
"So anyway," Stan continued, "Bishopgate itself, or at least the East Wing, is actually a converted mansion-used to belong to some Lousiana guy, I think his name was Teesdale or somethin' weird like that. After he died, some two-bit big city idiot named Dr. Hopper came along, bought the whole place for a dollar without wonderin' why, and turn the darn place into a general hospital. Then the Civil War broke out, and it ended up being a veteran's hospital for four years despite Hopper loudly arguin' with them every other week. Apart from that, everythin' seemed to be going okay, barrin' some poor Union guys who had horrible nightmares involving, and I quote, 'the devil himself had put the sky to the torch and stolen our names,' then around 1870, something goes wrong."
"Angry Indian ghosts possessed all the soldiers who ever stayed there and tried to eat everyone's brains?" Soos guessed. "'Cause there was this movie I saw once-"
"Not anythin' so blatant. Though that'd probably be less creepy." Stan sipped the tea. "See, around the Fall of 1870, Hopper suddenly vanishes from the county for a while, leaving a guy named Cave in his place. A few months later, Hopper comes back-and get this, his hair's white as snow after it's been bleached."
Mabel rose a hand. "Um, Grunkle, I really don't wanna upset anyone, but how old was he? I mean, hair losing it's color isn't-"
"41, actually. And he wasn't even going grey."
"Oh. Maybe he just aged badly-not like you or Abuelita, of course."
"Yeah, that's what I was thinkin' too. But here's another thing-he doesn't take his job back from Cave. Not officially, but when Cave's really going into the work of turning Bishopgate into a full asylum, even having a system for how good you'll be treated on the basis of how much you paid him, Hopper's completely unable to speak up. In fact, Hopper doesn't even offer his own opinions anymore, he just goes along with whatever Cave says. Now, I'm all for friendship, but somebody's gotta disagree someday. Particularly when ya spent four years of your life fighting authority to get your business back."
"Now, things start gettin' a little weirder for Bishopgate from there on, a little creepier. First, some horse spooks for reasons nobody has any idea about and tramples Cave to death. Then, Hopper dies of a heart attack. The next director, a guy named Brake, rebuilds and upgrades the place after some fire nearly burns it down, but as soon as it's completed he tells the crew to seal off the new sub-basement he was really pushin' before. Then he's found...you might wanna have tea ready for this one...with a new, ahem, killer necktie."
Dipper paled a bit. "...are you saying he hanged himself!?"
"Maybe? I dunno. Could be the ghosts decided to reenact the Old West to see what it was like from the other guys' side, if it really is a burial ground." Stan gulped the remainder of his tea before a quick refill. "Anyway, just seemingly mundane oogie boogie going on, director after that guy got strangled by a patient-then around 1920, Farnsworth Weaver comes along. Tell me, does that name sound familiar for any medicine?"
There was brief silence before Soos' raised his hand. "Oh, oh! I know! Weaver, as in those dudes who make that hand soap. How's the jingle-Oh yeah! Herme-Clean, sick ain't your scene-"
"No no no no NO! If I hear that song again I'm gonna need brain surgery to get it out!" Wendy cut in, pulling her cap over her ears.
"You should have heard what I came up with! I specifically got a loan to research-sorry, bit of nostalgia there." Stan cleared his throat. "Anyway, Weaver decides that since the place is nearly broke, he might as well buy it out, make it into a place for his company to start makin' inroads into psych research. Except he wasn't a doctor, he just inherited a company which had a lot of them on payroll."
"So, that's where Dr. Matthew Gorlay comes in, as the new head of Medicine-slash-actual head shrink. If that name sounds kind of like a horror movie villain, he lived down to it. I can swear on authority there was somethin' off with Dr. Gorlay."
Stan inhaled a bit. "First, you have to understand; Gorlay didn't seem that bad by the standards of the day. Back then, eugenics was the order of the day. For future reference kids, that's treating people like breedin' dogs; you find the qualities you want and let those guys have kids to pass on those traits and preventing the rest from doing so."
Mabel furrowed her brow. "That's kinda...cold, isn't it? Treating people you can talk to like pets?"
"Oh, you have no idea. But back in the day, it was considered humane to the human race to ensure future generations would have less genetic diseases. It didn't really work out, both because what you get from your parents isn't the end-all be-all, and that pretty soon led to people thinkin' that people who didn't look like them were problems that needed to be solved-see World War 2 for where that kind of thinkin' leads. But this was ten years before the Nazis even got power in the first place, and twenty years before they decided what they really wanted was to conquer the world. So when the doctor approaches his boss with the idea of making it so that the really ill patients, the ones who end up scribbling on the walls at best, can't have children? Nobody, and I mean nobody, blinks an eye."
Soos felt a growing pit at the bottom of his stomach. "This is gonna be like one of those movies where it turns out he turns out to doin' mad science to his patients, isn't it boss?"
"Well, given how he died before most of those movies came out? He could be considered a real pioneer in the field of horrifyin' surgery." Stan took another large gulp. "See, when one of his patients with Down syndrome-that's this really nasty type of genetic brain damage-died of brain bleedin' when Dr. Gorlay was out on a lecture tour, they brought in this other doctor, Werner, as a coroner. What he found was that the guy had been operated on fourteen times in the year before. What killed him was Gorlay messing up a second lobotomy."
There was a long silence after that, punctuated only by tea being gulped down.
"..So, that cheerful fact having come to light, Werner looks further into Gorlay's notes, and discovers he'd been involved directly in the deaths of over 300 patients, and another 150 were permanently injured so by him mucking around in their bodies. It's not pretty what he'd been doing to them either. Organ swaps, nerve cutting, electric shocks-it's like he viewed the asylum as his personal playground. And here's another thing; Weaver was in on it!"
"...Please tell me Gorlay was lying to him," Dipper said, looking queasy.
"I wish! I wouldn't put the idea he was being blackmailed out of mind, but it's more likely Weaver saw the fact that his doctor didn't really do things without purpose. He made a lot of discoveries in his day, lot of breakthroughs-which meant more prestige for his boss, and more prestige means more money. Of course, it also turns out Weaver broke the first and only real rule of business; never steal money from your own company. When the story broke, Weaver was thrown in the slammer and Gorlay followed him. He died pretty soon after that-couldn't stand being disgraced."
Stan paused for a short while after that, which Soos' Abuelita took to refill the tea-and not coincidentally, to allow Stan's audience to use the bathroom.
After the Shack's employees returned, Stan began again, inhaling deeply to steel himself. "Right, after Gorlay got booted out, Bishopgate basically sits bankrupt and empty for a few years until Weaver kicks the bucket just before World War 2 starts up. Dr. Werner, not having gotten another job during the Great Depression, decides that hey, you can always try again, and buys it in the bank auction, since Weaver didn't have any heirs-guy hated his cousins. Werner sits on it for a few years, sprucin' it up, until just after Germany surrenders, and he repurposes it as a veteran's hospital again. He doesn't do half-bad, and he makes some real big strides towards treating combat stress successfully, even got the Key to the City from Gravity Falls and a medal from the Army. And then: He retires."
"I'm gonna take a guess here and say that's where the other mad scientist dude was hired," Soos said, looking unfazed.
"Got it in one, Soos. Yep, Dr. Jeremiah 'Jerry' Moorcock, and even before he retired Werner smelled a nutcase. The only reason he became the director was that the trustees (those are basically the hospital's fund managers) thought his credentials looked shiny. So, anyway, Moorcock goes back to the bad old days and turns Bishopgate back into an insane asylum, and while he's nowhere near as nasty as Gorlay was on a good day, he's one of the more callous people Bishopgate ever had as a director. And of course, the fact he was one of the last great lobotomizers; Wendy, look up a girl named Allison Purchase sometime."
"Way ahead of you," she muttered as she hit the 'enter' button on her phone. "Says that she was at the center of a scandal that Wikipedia says was one of the really big things that turned people off on cutting out bits of other people's brains."
"And a good example of why you don't do drugs, kids," Stan tried to laugh. "See, Purchase was completely and utterly normal, she just overdosed on this thing called LSD. She was sent to Bishopgate because her parents were too far in denial to realize that they drove her to use drugs and convinced themselves she was having a nervous breakdown or somethin'. When the LSD wore off and she realized she was in a padded room, she freaked out and tore up her cell, at which point Moorcock, being too darn lazy to bother checking if someone is actually crazy or not, assumes she's untreatable and.." Stan made a pair of scissors with his right hand and mimed cutting at something behind his forehead.
"...That's awful," both of the twins said simultaneously. Wendy and Soos said nothing, but their expressions made clear they thought the same thing.
"Did he at least feel bad about it?" Mabel continued, now looking quite ill.
"Actually yeah, he did. Didn't stop him from fending off a lawsuit or not cutting forebrains. They say Allison spent the rest of her life there, unable to take care of herself without part of her mind. But that's where Bishopgate starts to get creepy again." Stan leaned forward. "Just over a year later, Jerry finishes his day, bids his assistants bye...and when they come back half an hour later, Jerry's had his forebrain cut."
For a moment, nobody said anything, though that had more to do with a strange rattling that, on further examination, turned out to be the otherwise silent Abuelita's own cup trembling against a plate. "Sorry," she almost-whispered. "First time I hear this. I knew something had happened, but...dios mio."
"Don't blame ya. Trustees tried to keep that part of the story on the hush-hush. Didn't want any scandals from any investigations, if you ask me." Stan cleared his throat. "Anyway, when Moorcock wakes up, it turns out he's reacted in a pretty strange way to; while most people with their forebrains cut kinda become like full-grown babies, Moorcock's still quite capable of talkin' and doing complex tasks. Thing is, he doesn't talk so much as rave. He spends all day muttering about 'angels in the moon' and how God's gonna make everything a utopia or somethin'-which is even weirder, because, before the lobotomy, Moorcock was an outspoken atheist. He hated the very concept of doomsday, thought people used it as an excuse to avoid doin' anything to make the world a better place. After he's found, he can preach about the end of the world with the best of 'em."
"Of course, he can't run an asylum if he sounds like one of the patients, so he gets shipped off somewhere east. Might be there still, for all I know." Stan let out a breath. "Anyway, that's the history lesson on Bishopgate. It's remained pretty miserable from there on, there was even a murder there by a director at one point-but it's all mundane misery, far as I can see. Up until now, at any rate."
There was a final draining of the tea cups, followed by all present making sure they didn't need to use the restroom for more than just bladder overcapacity. When the test came up a negative, Dipper was the first to break the silence. "Okay, that aside...why did Blubs say he didn't want people talking about it near him? That kind of scared isn't due to history, not alone."
"You know, if my employees keep on figuring out where I'm going to go with these things, part of me wonders if I even need to say anything. You'd be right of course-the latest weird thing to come out of that place was four years ago."
With that, Stan pulled out a tape recorder from his back pocket. "I specifically made this to convince myself I wasn't goin' crazy myself."
With that, he pressed play.
While the simple nature of cassette tapes made the contents grainy, all attending could definitely make out a faint, quiet noise like ruffling papers and adjusting chairs. After a few seconds of that there was a male voice humming to itself, shortly before a sigh.
"Allison," said the voice, a soft tone with a distinct East Coast accent, "We can't have you talking nonsense. If you keep on with this, we're going to have to take more drastic measures. Do you want that?"
The recording ended with a quiet click. "And before you ask," Stan said, putting down the player as far away from him as he could reach, "After that happened I buzzed by the library's computer to listen to a recording of pre-surgery Jerry Moorcock. That's him alright."
The eyes of everyone else in the room went wide as saucers.
"Basically, what happened was that for a month or so, anyone who talked about Bishopgate got that on their answerin' machine or something similar; Abuelita got a letter containing some of Gorlay's notes about a guy who literally couldn't be quiet, Dan got a sign on the door of that shed of his sayin' 'MANIC, DO NOT ENGAGE IN CONVERSATION'-basically, if ya said anything, you were told in a roundabout way to clam up. It stopped after about a month, but up until then there was so much of it even those Blind Eye jerks you told me about probably couldn't keep up. Really, it fed on itself, kinda-people kept on wonderin' why they got those threats when they talked about Bishopgate, so they decided to swap opinions about the place just to see for themselves. At the end of the month, Blubs decided to hold a public speech about it to see what would happen if he really defied the threat."
"...Wait," Wendy began, eyes widening even further. "Are you saying...that Durland-"
"Nah, he's always been like that," Stan cut in, much to his cashier's relief. "But that doesn't change the fact that he had some slides prepared, but the first picture got replaced by…" Stan pulled out a photograph. "This."
A brief pause. And then;
"AAAAAGH!"
"MY EYES! MY POOR, CUTE EYES!"
"BOSS, WHY DID YOU HAVE TO SHOW THAT!?"
"I DESERVE HAZARD PAY FOR THAT."
"Sorry, but it was probably the best way to show you." Mercifully, Stan threw the offending photo on the fire. "Suffice to say, Dr. Gorlay could be a real creep at times."
"So anyway, from that day on, pretty much everybody who was there, which means pretty much everyone affected by the month-long curse, swore not to speak of it lest it escalate further into someone getting hurt. I think there's probably someone more earthly that was doin' the threats given how they never happened again, but I realized whoever had the resources and obsession to pull that off probably wouldn't hesitate to hurt anyone who didn't heed those threats."
Slowly, Dipper lowered one of the hands covering his eyes. "And that's why you don't want anyone to go to Bishopgate."
"You got that right. And why you're not, unless I'm goin' and I'm not goin' unless you have a really good reason why."
--------------------
"Whaddya mean, 'they won't stop comin''!?"
Dipper looked over the journal #2, having somehow convinced his great-uncle to let him borrow it for a while. "Yeah, I've been looking over the notes Ford made on the fae, and before you ask, I'm still not pretending he's the one named Stanley in private. Back to my point, it looks like Teihiihan are part of a class of fae that need to be specifically banned from entry into the human world. If the ban is damaged, well…"
"...How can you touch a restraining order, much less hurt it?"
"Well, not the legal language of the ban itself," Dipper began, flipping to an earlier page. "But a lot of pledges-mystically enforced fae deals and laws-do have physical items they're sworn on. If the symbol is ruined in some way…" He shrugged.
Stan began to rub his nose. "...Okay, so I'm gonna guess you think that whatever this 'item' is, it's around that place. First of all, what makes you think-"
"That this isn't an exception to that rule?" Dipper cleared his throat. "'From what I have discovered from credible sources-'"
"Define 'credible.' There's a hunk of bunk in the world surrounding the weird, take it from a source of it-"
"Grunkle Stan, you grew up with Ford. Do you really think he isn't the kind of person who fact checks everything he puts in a work of his? Twice?"
Stan looked thoughtful for a second. "...Point taken. Continue."
"'According to credible sources, any ban a variety of Huntsmen suffer that bars them from Earth is generally based around a cautionary tale that prohibits them from attacking until the rules of the story are violated. As a result, heroes who ban them generally find things that aren't likely to be violated if they're forgotten, not trusting the memory of people in general or the telephone effect.'"
Stan caught on. "...You think that somthin' happened at the old asylum that let them back."
"Exactly. And if they're trying to set up a camp here, things are only going to get more dangerous the more of them immigrate here."
Stan bit his cheek and thought on it. On the one hand, more Teihiihan meant more danger for the twins and the Shack. On the other, Stan still was far from convinced the person behind The Photo (which deserved those capital letters) wasn't any less dangerous than a hunting party of insane dwarves. Or much less supernatural in nature, given how fairies in general were involved; it probably wouldn't be hard at all to hide pointy ears and get a job at the place.
"...So, we'll hunker down, figure out a way to ward em' off. I'm pretty sure we don't have any other examples of those 'token' thing, and I don't think we or the town is going to be on their radar for new catches. Really, I think Cadwallop was kind of desperate about getting a new name; Soos isn't exactly the kind of guy who'd be a fight worth talking about."
"...Point." Dipper admitted. "But on the other hand, you tend to buy up a lot of junk, and from what Ved said we can't tell if something is a token until more Teihiihan try to steal it. And let's face it, we may be okay, but I don't think the forest creatures are. I mean, the Gremlobin has that gaze of his, but it's easy enough to avoid to the point where hunting him isn't suicide. And I don't think most of the creatures they'd be after are as lethal as he is."
Stan was severely tempted to point out that humans were not the various monsters of Gravity Falls, and especially not his family and friends. But they were Dipper's friends, many of them, so he decided it was wiser to keep his mouth shut on that item of xenophobic cynicism. "...Could I put one last argument forward?" Stan began. "Somebody's on the case already, and I think Ved's probably better at doing his job than we are. He probably has buds that are also better at it than we are, so maybe would should-"
A familiar cough sounded from the back doorway of the Shack. "Grunkle Stan?", Mabel began. "You sure you were hearing the guy? I mean, listening not just to what he said but how he was saying it?"
Stan turned around, looking confused.
"I mean on the tail end of his big 'I want to tell you, but if I don't play nice with the chief I'm gonna be in big trouble' speech? You know, 'ze whole completely coincident loyalty pledge'?"
"...And?" Stan asked, already dreading the answer.
"Well, if he has the ability to make a promise unbreakable on pain of big trouble, why didn't he do that?"
A second later, Stan heard the distinctive slap of Dipper facepalming.
"You think he was usin' reverse psychology on us?"
"I don't know what that means, but if it's 'saying the opposite of what you want in the hopes someone will do it', I guess so." Mabel tapped her chin. "From the sound of it, whoever Ved's boss is, he's really scared of anything that threatens secrecy in any way. Maybe he's a tyrant. maybe he's just a bit too safety-minded for his own good, maybe those web stories Soos hates were right about the humans being jerks to elves, but by the sound of it, he's not the kind of person who can ask for help no matter how much he or his friends really need it. Then orders his friends not to ask for help."
There was a very long pause as Stan thought on this.
The twins would want to go even if they didn't already; the mysterious Chawkamas Mound and the strange events it was likely behind was exactly the kind of weird that drew his niece and nephew like moths to flame, and discovering at least one person was in big trouble due to the mystery was like pouring gas on the open flame. On the other, it was still open flame, in the form of not just the person behind The Photo, but also short and angry serial killers…
And unless someone doused the flame, it would spread and put all of the town, including the twins, in danger. One the designated firefighter didn't think he could put out.
"You win," he groaned. "But we're only going to investigate until the Shack is refurbished enough to reopen in about a week. Should be a couple days after Ford gets back. And we're taking backup."
"Backup?", both Pines twins asked simultaneously.
--------------------
"...Excuse me, what!?"
Wendy slammed her magazine shut and threw it on the table. "I'm sorry, I just heard my boss say we're going to a haunted insane asylum? Please tell me that just came out wrong."
"Actually yeah. I said the possibly haunted insane asylum." Stan tried to laugh. "Maybe it has a resident nutjob instead. Er, the kind looks sane, actually has a shed full of dismembered body parts."
"Nuh-uh. No way Jose." Wendy sat back, crossing her arms. "Crazy people? I'm cool with. Ghosts? I've dealt with them, no worries. Crazy people and ghosts, with a significant portion being the ghosts of crazy people? Ha ha, no."
"Actually," Dipper began, tapping his fingers together. "Most, er, mentally unique people aren't hostile or even that non-functional-"
"Most is not all, dude," Wendy interrupted, pulling out her phone. "The reason I recognized Bishopgate is that one of my old teachers made us do a report on serial killers before someone figured out a way to sneak a pink slip around his tenure. My guy was in there for a while-Cameron Mueller, aka, the Gourmand Surgeon."
Dipper looked pointedly away from the phone's screen, and thus any concrete information on how a multiple murderer got both "Gourmand" and "Surgeon" as parts of his nickname. "Point taken," he said, a bit loudly. "Still, even if he died there, we-"
"Are going to be going wherever it is that enrages his unquiet spirit." Wendy sat back in her chair. "It's the way exploring a bad place always turns out for stupid teens. I am not stupid, ergo I am not going."
"Come on, Wendy," Soos began. "Employee unity and all that?"
Wendy cocked her head. "You know what, you're right! Let's say I just do your job while you're off chasing crazy dwarves-"
"It's gonna be a week until the Shack is fit for reopening, Wendy."
"...Dang."
Mabel put down her pack. "Look, I get you're scared-"
"Scared!? Ya think?!" Wendy shouted, kicking her chair away. "I don't wanna go near a haunted booby hatch to begin with, much less one likely haunted by the ghosts of angry Indians, a serial killer, and a freaking proto-Nazi! I had enough of ghosts with that convenience store, and those were just a grumpy old married couple! I slept under the bed for a week after playing through the asylum level in Noisy Mountain 2! I have no shame in admitting I am terrified, guys!"
Slowly, Wendy became aware she was leaning over the cashier desk, crushing the register. With her hat. Sheepishly, she closed the money tray. "Sorry. I just have this..thing, about hospitals, okay?"
Mabel blinked. "I..kinda figured. Well, that or you had too much caffeine." An awkward pause. "You wanna..talk about it?"
"...Not really," Wendy admitted, slumping back into her chair. "I just..I don't think I can be much help. I mean, you guys not only have a lot more practice than this than I do, it's that..well, you saw that. How much help am I going to be if I'm scared of my own shadow?"
Soos cleared his throat, awkwardly. "Is this like my birthday thing?"
"...Kinda," Wendy began, looking rather depressed now. "Look, can you just go? Please? I know it's just me being a coward, but-"
"Wendy."
The cashier in question nearly fell out of her chair. "Stan?"
The proprietor of the Mystery Shack slid behind the desk, putting his hand on her shoulder. "I'm gonna cut to the chase. I know, and I'm not gonna tell until you're ready too. But I know who you are, kid, and you're not a coward." He paused. "Lazy, unmotivated, and a bit delinquent, but you ain't a coward. Fearlessness is overrated, real guts come from the fact you are scared, but you do the job anyway. Not having fears means you're an idiot, or Gideon Gleeful."
"...and the 'but' is?" Wendy began, looking skeptical.
"Besides the fact that I just made a redundant statement, until you face your fears, you're gonna be ruled by them. Toughening up is more about bein' confident enough to say you aren't the world's whipping boy-er, girl-and that being treated as one's really not fair to anyone. Besides, fear's a good thing when it's trying to tell you if somethin' you or say, your employer is gonna do somethin' stupid." Stan winked.
Wendy hummed, thinking it over. "...pay me for this week with a bonus, and I'm in."
"I'll give you pay and Monday off."
"Done."
A moment later, Soos found his voice. "...Did Mr. Pines just...agree to paying more?"
Dipper shook his head. "So I am not seeing things. Good to know."
Stan chuckled. "Make no mistake, this isn't about me being visited by three ghosts-it's just that the Shack has a hazard pay clause and, I can tell you, Bishopgate's pretty dang hazardous." With that he lifted up his backpack. "Is there anythin' we need to do first, before we go on the world's creepiest field trip? Besides Wendy packin'?"
"Not here," Dipper said, adjusting his hat. "I've sent an email to Ford telling him what's going on-and yeah, I was surprised he knew what that was too, apparently they were testing the internet at his college."
Mabel seemed to be paying attention somewhere else at the moment. "Huh? Oh yeah, I told Candy and Grenda what we were doing, and they're gonna tell Pacifica. Possibly embellished, but they got the idea."
"Abuelita got it straight from the horse's mouth." To emphasize his point, Soos imitated a nicker and then took a bite of of some hay. Shortly before spitting it out. "That tasted a lot better in my head."
"Good." Stan did a quick check of the register's cash tray for any errant coins, then locked it. "Let the bad idea begin!"
With that, Stan, Dipper, and Soos strode out. After a short while of fighting her urge to stay behind anyway, Wendy reluctantly got to her feet as well, following them.
Mabel was the last. She was too busy wondering something.
Wendy...what happened?
--------------------
--------------------
--------------------
A/N: Continuity note; this takes place directly after Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons. Assume later episodes simply do not exist, especially any about overall cosmology.
Except not really. Fun fact about the nWoD: The entire universe beyond Earth and the mortal plane could be a big HERE THERE BE DRAGONS banner and it would be entirely accurate.
Partially. But they're still screwups, as evinced by the actual chapter.
The Gentry of Arcadia, in my mind, seem to be kin to the natural fae of the Disneyverse but with MANY key differences.
Disney fae seem bound by purpose in ability and nature, though they still possess a measure of genuine free-will, as evidenced by this little goodie from Sleeping Beauty:
Merryweather: I'd like to turn her into a fat ol' - hop toad.
Fauna: Now, dear, that isn't a very nice thing to say.
Flora: Besides, we can't. You know our magic doesn't work that way.
Fauna: It can only do good, dear, to bring joy and happiness.
Merryweather: Well, *that* would make me happy.
Notice that Merryweather regards visiting violence on Maleficent as a goal, despite being unable to, due to metaphysical limitations. Despite being inhuman, all disney fae, at least most of those bound by Good, are capable of empathy, as shown by compassionate fairy godmothers and others of their kindred.
The Arcadian Gentry, are a WHOLE 'nother ballgame.
Completely remorseless, completely monstrous and completely INHUMAN, these eldritch abominations are the very reason that the Fae get such a bad reputation, and with good reason.
Unlike their counterparts, the so-called "True Fae" are completely devoid of anything resembling a soul. Lacking true purpose, these empty, unreasonable horrors are utterly alien to the world, if not universe itself. The only honor they might have is that many are bound by obscure and bizarre oaths and rules, always "honoring" a bargain once made.
They still lie though. They always lie.
I can only imagine that conflict is always certain, should a world-born fairy encounter one of the Others, and woe be unto any who get caught in the crossfire!
Incidentally, the little winged ones of fairykind are very much living in Gravity Falls...
Disney fae seem bound by purpose in ability and nature, though they still possess a measure of genuine free-will, as evidenced by this little goodie from Sleeping Beauty:
Merryweather: I'd like to turn her into a fat ol' - hop toad.
Fauna: Now, dear, that isn't a very nice thing to say.
Flora: Besides, we can't. You know our magic doesn't work that way.
Fauna: It can only do good, dear, to bring joy and happiness.
Merryweather: Well, *that* would make me happy.
Notice that Merryweather regards visiting violence on Maleficent as a goal, despite being unable to, due to metaphysical limitations. Despite being inhuman, all disney fae, at least most of those bound by Good, are capable of empathy, as shown by compassionate fairy godmothers and others of their kindred.
The Arcadian Gentry, are a WHOLE 'nother ballgame.
Completely remorseless, completely monstrous and completely INHUMAN, these eldritch abominations are the very reason that the Fae get such a bad reputation, and with good reason.
Unlike their counterparts, the so-called "True Fae" are completely devoid of anything resembling a soul. Lacking true purpose, these empty, unreasonable horrors are utterly alien to the world, if not universe itself. The only honor they might have is that many are bound by obscure and bizarre oaths and rules, always "honoring" a bargain once made.
They still lie though. They always lie.
I can only imagine that conflict is always certain, should a world-born fairy encounter one of the Others, and woe be unto any who get caught in the crossfire!
Incidentally, the little winged ones of fairykind are very much living in Gravity Falls...
World-Born Fae opinion of Arcadian Fae: "True Fae" INDEED! Empty, greedy things, lacking purpose, who prey on others who have all the most important things they lack! How we're related to those horrors is beyond even OUR understanding! Wasting their very existence by indulging in frivolous atrocities! At least OURS has MEANING.
Arcadian Fae opinion of World-Born Fae: Pretty, pesky yet POWERFUL little kindred. Born of the Wyrd, of Fate and Time like we, yet born also of the World and Worlds of our favored prey! Shackled by "purpose" and limited form, our wayward brethren at least provide fair challenge and sport! And the GLAMOUR they somehow produce! (Shudders with alien ecstasy)
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Bit of a teaser, speaking of receptionists:
"Not my department. The check-ins are the left doors heading into the building."
And whatever he was about to say remained unsaid. That kind of flippant attitude was something it was a tad surprising to be on the other end of.
Soos cleared his throat. "Actually, dude, we're not, uh, admitting anyone, we just want to ask, uh, a few questions."
A few seconds later, the headphone wearing receptionist apparently realized they weren't leaving and groaned, clicking something on his screen before swiveling to face the Shack's employees.
"What can I help you with," he said, too flatly to be considered a question.
Of course there was something off about the clerks too. Why wouldn't there be? Unlike the vague menace of Bishopgate's exterior, though, this desk jockey was a far more mundane kind of off. To put it simply, the guy was way, way too young to be hospital staff, seemingly. He didn't even seem like he had graduated high school yet, let alone had the degrees needed to be a part of a medical institution. Admittedly, he just worked the front desk, but somehow, the Shack felt there was more to that job than "take notes. refer to someone who can actually do something about it, play solitaire." The expression on his face didn't seem out of place on an overworked secretary, but the Shack was the entire customer base there-he could at least attempt to look interested for a few minutes.
"We were wondering if you allowed visitors to people who don't have anybody in here," Soos continued. "See, the dudes over are taking a bit of summer school, and for the class report on Monday is on modern mental health. We were-"
"Non-patient visiting hours are on Saturday," the clerk interrupted, reaching for his headphones. "Either look it up, or make a good excuse. Bye."
"Hey!" Stan interrupted, slamming his magic-eight ball walking baton over the headphones. "What's that on the sign?"
The clerk, for his part, didn't seem to bother with being annoyed. "If you're here about the tour, our guides are currently on summer break."
"S-summer break!?" Stan slid the headphones a little farther away. "How does that make any sense? Hiking the price, sure, but-"
"Hey, man, I'm just the receptionist. I don't know everyone's number. So, if you'll-"
Stan drew the headphones further away. "Look kid, I've dealt with a lot of front desks before in my life. And I can tell ya kid-you aren't cut out as a liar. I don't care how much paperwork you think you're avoiding, but it's gotta be less than answerin' a complaint. So, shyster to shyster-what's the real reason?"
The clerk looked up, popping a bit of gum in his mouth and chewing thoughtfully.
"...Can't tell ya. Bonus is at stake."
"Can't argue with that," Stan admitted, releasing the headphones.
"Excuse me", Mabel interrupted. "But can I plead the case of, um, really precocious little girls here?"
The clerk looked down, an instant of surprise briefly breaking his mask of late-teenage indifference. "Um, sure."
Mabel made her best 'I am a cute girl, please pity me' face. "Pleeease? It's really important we get this scholarship."
"No can do, dude."
Okay, time to really turn on the Sad Cute. "But mister-"
"How long until you have to turn in the report?"
Oh. Didn't rehearse that.
Oh dear.
Suddenly, Wendy cleared her throat. "Actually, two weeks. It's a summer term paper."
"Okay, guys," the clerk began, rolling over to his computer, beginning to type away. "I'll have you in for...the 20th? Sounds good?"
"Wendy, what are you doing?" Dipper whispered through the side of his mouth.
The redhead paid no attention, though, instead leaning on the desk. "Awesome. Not really what we'd like, giving the Work Now Lazy Later principle, but hey, it's the thought that counts."
The clerk was paying full attention now. "Yeah man, I feel for ya. Really, you know the worst part about this job?"
"I'm gonna guess the waiting."
"Worse! The waiting, and not having a clue why." The clerk leaned back in his seat towards Wendy, apparently thankful to have someone to rant to. "I mean, come on guys! We're the guys whose job it is to get someone else to take over, you could at least tell us why the tour nobody goes on is-I've said too much," he suddenly finished, looking embarrassed. "Suffice to say, our bosses make no sense."
"Tell me about it! I mean, just between you and me, my boss? Complete loon." Blissfully ignoring Stan suddenly scowling, Wendy turned to directly face the receptionist. "I mean seriously, sometimes I just wanna...annoy him sometimes. Do something I know won't hurt enough to put my nametag in danger, but enough to pop a vein."
Stan wasn't scowling any more. In fact, he looked outright interested now.
For his part, the clerk was starting to look nervous, glancing at the other (oblivious) receptionists. "I dunno. I mean, it's kind of a violation of ethics anyway…"
"Oh come on dude! What's more important-a list of things the Man made to keep you down and licking his clown shoes, or the dreams of mostly innocent children?"
The children in question caught on, and both the Pine twins proceeded to invoke the Forbidden Art Of The Puppy Dog Eyes on the clerk.
"...I get it. Still, I don't know how-"
"On a completely unrelated matter," Stan interrupted, looking away innocently. "Did ya know hospitals giving out visitor badges don't actually require you to justify why they're roaming the halls? Unless it's something like live-saving surgery, a person with a badge can just walk around, and say, report on what's going on..."
A mischievous smirk came to the clerk's face. "And how long would this hypothetical visitor be loitering for?"
"Oh...maybe about five days? Really nothing else to do when you only have a certain valuable portion of your time taken up once a week, on Mondays."
"Really? What a shame." With that, the clerk hit a few buttons on his computer, and an electronic signature machine clicked on. "Sign here please. Also note that the hypothetical person would have to check in each day to sign in. These badges are only good for sixteen hours. Regulation, ya know? ...Would wonder why they'd want to come back. You came in through the front, right?"
"Than-er, yeah. Needs a good gardener. And a paint job. Maybe a new building," Wendy said as she quickly jotted down her name.
As she passed Stan, she smirked at Stan knowingly.
"You have sleep-learned well, young Sith apprentice," Stan didn't really bother to whisper in reply.
---------------------
"Not my department. The check-ins are the left doors heading into the building."
And whatever he was about to say remained unsaid. That kind of flippant attitude was something it was a tad surprising to be on the other end of.
Soos cleared his throat. "Actually, dude, we're not, uh, admitting anyone, we just want to ask, uh, a few questions."
A few seconds later, the headphone wearing receptionist apparently realized they weren't leaving and groaned, clicking something on his screen before swiveling to face the Shack's employees.
"What can I help you with," he said, too flatly to be considered a question.
Of course there was something off about the clerks too. Why wouldn't there be? Unlike the vague menace of Bishopgate's exterior, though, this desk jockey was a far more mundane kind of off. To put it simply, the guy was way, way too young to be hospital staff, seemingly. He didn't even seem like he had graduated high school yet, let alone had the degrees needed to be a part of a medical institution. Admittedly, he just worked the front desk, but somehow, the Shack felt there was more to that job than "take notes. refer to someone who can actually do something about it, play solitaire." The expression on his face didn't seem out of place on an overworked secretary, but the Shack was the entire customer base there-he could at least attempt to look interested for a few minutes.
"We were wondering if you allowed visitors to people who don't have anybody in here," Soos continued. "See, the dudes over are taking a bit of summer school, and for the class report on Monday is on modern mental health. We were-"
"Non-patient visiting hours are on Saturday," the clerk interrupted, reaching for his headphones. "Either look it up, or make a good excuse. Bye."
"Hey!" Stan interrupted, slamming his magic-eight ball walking baton over the headphones. "What's that on the sign?"
The clerk, for his part, didn't seem to bother with being annoyed. "If you're here about the tour, our guides are currently on summer break."
"S-summer break!?" Stan slid the headphones a little farther away. "How does that make any sense? Hiking the price, sure, but-"
"Hey, man, I'm just the receptionist. I don't know everyone's number. So, if you'll-"
Stan drew the headphones further away. "Look kid, I've dealt with a lot of front desks before in my life. And I can tell ya kid-you aren't cut out as a liar. I don't care how much paperwork you think you're avoiding, but it's gotta be less than answerin' a complaint. So, shyster to shyster-what's the real reason?"
The clerk looked up, popping a bit of gum in his mouth and chewing thoughtfully.
"...Can't tell ya. Bonus is at stake."
"Can't argue with that," Stan admitted, releasing the headphones.
"Excuse me", Mabel interrupted. "But can I plead the case of, um, really precocious little girls here?"
The clerk looked down, an instant of surprise briefly breaking his mask of late-teenage indifference. "Um, sure."
Mabel made her best 'I am a cute girl, please pity me' face. "Pleeease? It's really important we get this scholarship."
"No can do, dude."
Okay, time to really turn on the Sad Cute. "But mister-"
"How long until you have to turn in the report?"
Oh. Didn't rehearse that.
Oh dear.
Suddenly, Wendy cleared her throat. "Actually, two weeks. It's a summer term paper."
"Okay, guys," the clerk began, rolling over to his computer, beginning to type away. "I'll have you in for...the 20th? Sounds good?"
"Wendy, what are you doing?" Dipper whispered through the side of his mouth.
The redhead paid no attention, though, instead leaning on the desk. "Awesome. Not really what we'd like, giving the Work Now Lazy Later principle, but hey, it's the thought that counts."
The clerk was paying full attention now. "Yeah man, I feel for ya. Really, you know the worst part about this job?"
"I'm gonna guess the waiting."
"Worse! The waiting, and not having a clue why." The clerk leaned back in his seat towards Wendy, apparently thankful to have someone to rant to. "I mean, come on guys! We're the guys whose job it is to get someone else to take over, you could at least tell us why the tour nobody goes on is-I've said too much," he suddenly finished, looking embarrassed. "Suffice to say, our bosses make no sense."
"Tell me about it! I mean, just between you and me, my boss? Complete loon." Blissfully ignoring Stan suddenly scowling, Wendy turned to directly face the receptionist. "I mean seriously, sometimes I just wanna...annoy him sometimes. Do something I know won't hurt enough to put my nametag in danger, but enough to pop a vein."
Stan wasn't scowling any more. In fact, he looked outright interested now.
For his part, the clerk was starting to look nervous, glancing at the other (oblivious) receptionists. "I dunno. I mean, it's kind of a violation of ethics anyway…"
"Oh come on dude! What's more important-a list of things the Man made to keep you down and licking his clown shoes, or the dreams of mostly innocent children?"
The children in question caught on, and both the Pine twins proceeded to invoke the Forbidden Art Of The Puppy Dog Eyes on the clerk.
"...I get it. Still, I don't know how-"
"On a completely unrelated matter," Stan interrupted, looking away innocently. "Did ya know hospitals giving out visitor badges don't actually require you to justify why they're roaming the halls? Unless it's something like live-saving surgery, a person with a badge can just walk around, and say, report on what's going on..."
A mischievous smirk came to the clerk's face. "And how long would this hypothetical visitor be loitering for?"
"Oh...maybe about five days? Really nothing else to do when you only have a certain valuable portion of your time taken up once a week, on Mondays."
"Really? What a shame." With that, the clerk hit a few buttons on his computer, and an electronic signature machine clicked on. "Sign here please. Also note that the hypothetical person would have to check in each day to sign in. These badges are only good for sixteen hours. Regulation, ya know? ...Would wonder why they'd want to come back. You came in through the front, right?"
"Than-er, yeah. Needs a good gardener. And a paint job. Maybe a new building," Wendy said as she quickly jotted down her name.
As she passed Stan, she smirked at Stan knowingly.
"You have sleep-learned well, young Sith apprentice," Stan didn't really bother to whisper in reply.
-----------------------
Xomniac
Clockwork Purveyor of Prose and Originality
Straight up Great Old One to Outer God IMHO.
...Er, I don't quite follow what you're getting at.
Giygas
Cutest Sawk i could find. Lucario is a nice extra.
I was asking what would happen if Abyssals and True Faes decided to invade the same place.(If possible)
Does things get even worse than a single invasion, or would they nullify each other, or nobody would notice that it is a double invasion?(I know that it isn't exactly the right thread)
Depends.
Does the Annunaki (remember how Bill said he was trapped in a decaying dimension? An Annunaki is a mage term for both an Abyssal dimension and the seemingly sapient will that drives it to invade reality) the invaders are from have a set of physical laws conducive to fae magic and Fate? If so, ELDRITCH BEST FRIENDS FOREVER! :lol
A/N: Behold, ladies and gents:
The Plot Begins! And now I don't have to worry about the actual show messing up my timeline!
...Which stinks, but really, it's probably better as the self-contained two-season series it was imagined as, honestly. All neat and relatively tidy. Besides, it's not like it has an open ending a la Twin Peaks, am I right?
Also, given revelations in The Last Mabelcorn and Weirdmageddon? Bill Cipher is totally one of the Gentry himself, or at least a powerful spirit. Maybe an acamoth. For those of you who don't know Changeling, let that be ominous foreshadowing, along with the fact that the unicorns are pretty Gentry themselves.
(Except for the part about acamoth. That particular segment of the nWoD doesn't figure in this story. Probably a good thing for our intrepid heroes. Ask me if you wanna know more. Not the part about Gentry though, that's spoilers. I will say the bubble seal is a perfectly good mental image of how reality scabs over in the nWoD. And Mabel's bubble-world a pretty good mental image of why people willingly serve more trustworthy acamoth).
It wasn't the most eventful drive, all things considered. Pretty much the only thing that happened was everyone realizing that Stan's car was not meant for journeys on the interstate, however brief (the thing bounced at higher speeds-apparently his mother had this "interstate seance" scam). Still, moderate-to-severe discomfort and head bruises aside, events were ultimately nothing of real import on the relatively brief (it was an hour north of town) journey to Bishopgate.
The immediate approach to Bishopgate was where things started getting interesting, in a Chinese backhanded well-wishing kind of way.
For one, the dirt road that lead off the exit ramp was what could be called light-to-heavy forested. As in, it started off completely clear, then a few feet into the road there were tightly packed trees on either side. This gave the road a rather unpleasant look of being a great, green, sideways maw, especially given the...unique growth of some of the branches, hanging over the road.
Speaking of the road-
"Grunk-gah!-le Stan? Does your-ow!-car have trouble wit-sorry Wendy-dirt too?"
"No, it's just-oof-this darn road. Seriously, how long-ouch!-since they filled in the potholes, twenty years agoooooo I am going to sue them! For semi-legit reasons!"
And nobody in the car could tell if it was just them, but the path seemed to get bumpier as they got closer to the hospital. Almost as if the road was trying to warn them away.
Finally, the car got past the maw, and in the fading sunlight was a large, columned mansion that had to be Bishopgate itself, looming on top of an enormous hill that had to be the mysterious mound.
Really, the asylum seemed incomplete, somehow. Everything about the place seemed to be the sort of thing that lightning would dramatically flash behind as the sky vented its tearful wrath upon the land. For one, its position on the mound was slightly skewed towards the driveway, giving it the appearance of a crouching cougar, ready to pounce. The columns did not help, being an off-white color that was probably intended to be comforting by a person who had no idea what comforting meant. The windows on what had to be the twenty or so rooms facing the street were narrow, giving the impression that the hospital was glaring at any approaching it with way, way too many eyes. As if the giant clock on the top of the overhand didn't bring to mind a hungry cyclops already..
Which wasn't even getting into the yard. To be frank, it seemed whoever the current director was of Bishopgate, they had forgotten that such a thing as a "groundskeeper" existed. Or...actually no, one who would have taken a good look and quit would be more likely to actually burn the foliage down, in the probably correct assumption bare earth or ash would look less menacing. Probably less lazy as well.
The hedgerows between the three staircases leading up to the doors had grown so wild that it was difficult to tell where one line of bushes ended and another began, when the rows were placedbehind each other. The hedges also seemed unsure if they wanted to be the familiar boxiness of Euclidean geometry or not, leading to the overall effect of an organic, leafy heap of disorganized car parts and tentacles threading out of them at semi-random areas. Speaking of tentacles, the asylum's face had apparently developed quite the ivy problem, with the thickest individual vines any worker at the Mystery Shack had ever seen. The way the plants had grown almost looked like a pair of hands with the world's longest fingers, trailing up Bishopgate's face like the asylum itself was bemoaning its state. Or possibly being held back from attacking.
"...That is the angriest building I have ever seen," Soos put succinctly.. "And I've seen the Tunnel of Loathe at Dystopia World."
"We sure this place isn't abandoned utterly?" Wendy asked, slightly hopefully.
"No such luck." Stan pointed the Staff Only parking, revealing a nearly-full lot. Perhaps the only full lot in the entire grounds.
Dipper took a glance at the building. "What are those on the door?"
"The Six Saints," Wendy replied automatically. "Shortly after Bishopgate became, well, Bishopgate, it seems one of the original owners got someone to make new doors with Catholic patrons of mental health carved on them. Website says it was his way of blessing the new hospital's endeavors and wishing a speedy recovery to all."
"Huh." Dipper leaned back. "Weird. They looked kinda familiar. Grandpa Shermy really did have a famous old dead guy face."
By now the car had pulled to a stop, so Mabel poked her head out of the window for a closer look. "...I don't remember that picture of Gampy being so...camera-shy."
Curious, Stan pulled out his binoculars to get a closer look before he forgot.
Sure enough, even the supposed blessing of Bishopgate by its original owners looked a little off-kilter. There was nothing overly horrifying about the doors (really, the images were somewhat uninspired, as sacred icons of holy people went), but something about the way they were posed gave Stan the sense that the Six Saints felt like they're really rather be somewhere else. The rightmost pair had a pair of cloaked figures, one man and one woman, who appeared to be caught mid-step on their way out of the picture. The center pair were both men, an older one almost seeming to push on the fourth wall in hopes it would give way, and a younger one with a hat, learning on his cane with apparent resignation to his post. The leftmost pair featured a man with his cloak drawn in such a way like he was attempting to be as invisible as the door would allow him to be, and a woman whose arm outstretched to the heavens reeked less of prayer than with a sense of "seriously God, why?"
"...Something tells me whoever bought them didn't pay enough up front," Stan muttered.
As a final bit of disorientation, going through the center doors to the visitor center (whose Saints, according to the placard nearby, were Eustochium of Padua and Benedict Joseph Labre) was such a jarring shift of scenery Dipper briefly wondered if he had wandered through a portal to an alternate universe (it wouldn't be surprising).
Whereas the exterior of Bishopgate looked like a restored mansion and museum, the inside was about as sterile as a hospital could get-tasteful blue walls, a large, comfy sofa and not so comfy cushioned metal chairs, a U-shaped welcome desk with staff dutifully monitoring their card game programs, vending machines, even a magazine rack. It looked like just about any city clinic in the world.
At first glance. On second inspection, there was, among other things, places where the brown marble tiles met hardwood, in the alcoves were tarnished metal figurines that reeked of an era before the Civil War, whose most new features were the glass casings and the "DO NOT TOUCH" signs, and hanging above the whole scene was a great chandelier that immediately put the movie buffs of the Shack in mind of a Roaring Twenties concert hall (and perhaps was in one once at some point, given the placard under it credited it to Director Weaver).
Also, there was a sign explaining how to schedule tours of the grounds. A History of Mental Health in a Half-Mile, according to the promotional image.
At least there wasn't much of a line. Not a lot of people checking in friends and family to the live-in mental hospital, thank all that was holy. With entities like Bill Cipher around, that could easily have been a problem. Stan walked up to the center receptionist, and-
"Not my department. The check-ins are the left doors heading into the building."
And whatever he was about to say remained unsaid. That kind of flippant attitude was something it was a tad surprising to be on the other end of.
Soos cleared his throat. "Actually, dude, we're not, uh, admitting anyone, we just want to ask, uh, a few questions."
A few seconds later, the headphone wearing receptionist apparently realized they weren't leaving and groaned, clicking something on his screen before swiveling to face the Shack's employees.
"What can I help you with," he said, too flatly to be considered a question.
Of course there was something off about the clerks too. Why wouldn't there be? Unlike the vague menace of Bishopgate's exterior, though, this desk jockey was a far more mundane kind of off. To put it simply, the guy was way, way too young to be hospital staff, seemingly. He didn't even seem like he had graduated high school yet, let alone had the degrees needed to be a part of a medical institution. Admittedly, he just worked the front desk, but somehow, the Shack felt there was more to that job than "take notes. refer to someone who can actually do something about it, play solitaire." The expression on his face didn't seem out of place on an overworked secretary, but the Shack was the entire customer base there-he could at least attempt to look interested for a few minutes.
"We were wondering if you allowed visitors to people who don't have anybody in here," Soos continued. "See, the dudes over are taking a bit of summer school, and for the class report on Monday is on modern mental health. We were-"
"Non-patient visiting hours are on Saturday," the clerk interrupted, reaching for his headphones. "Either look it up, or make a good excuse. Bye."
"Hey!" Stan interrupted, slamming his magic-eight ball walking baton over the headphones. "What's that on the sign?"
The clerk, for his part, didn't seem to bother with being annoyed. "If you're here about the tour, our guides are currently on summer break."
"S-summer break!?" Stan slid the headphones a little farther away. "How does that make any sense? Hiking the price, sure, but-"
"Hey, man, I'm just the receptionist. I don't know everyone's number. So, if you'll-"
Stan drew the headphones further away. "Look kid, I've dealt with a lot of front desks before in my life. And I can tell ya kid-you aren't cut out as a liar. I don't care how much paperwork you think you're avoiding, but it's gotta be less than answerin' a complaint. So, shyster to shyster-what's the real reason?"
The clerk looked up, popping a bit of gum in his mouth and chewing thoughtfully.
"...Can't tell ya. Bonus is at stake."
"Can't argue with that," Stan admitted, releasing the headphones.
"Excuse me", Mabel interrupted. "But can I plead the case of, um, really precocious little girls here?"
The clerk looked down, an instant of surprise briefly breaking his mask of late-teenage indifference. "Um, sure."
Mabel made her best 'I am a cute girl, please pity me' face. "Pleeease? It's really important we get this scholarship."
"No can do, dude."
Okay, time to really turn on the Sad Cute. "But mister-"
"How long until you have to turn in the report?"
Oh. Didn't rehearse that.
Oh dear.
Suddenly, Wendy cleared her throat. "Actually, two weeks. It's a summer term paper."
"Okay, guys," the clerk began, rolling over to his computer, beginning to type away. "I'll have you in for...the 20th? Sounds good?"
"Wendy, what are you doing?" Dipper whispered through the side of his mouth.
The redhead paid no attention, though, instead leaning on the desk. "Awesome. Not really what we'd like, giving the Work Now Lazy Later principle, but hey, it's the thought that counts."
The clerk was paying full attention now. "Yeah man, I feel for ya. Really, you know the worst part about this job?"
"I'm gonna guess the waiting"
"Worse! The waiting, and not having a clue why." The clerk leaned back in his seat towards Wendy, apparently thankful to have someone to rant to. "I mean, come on guys! We're the guys whose job it is to get someone else to take over, you could at least tell us why the tour nobody goes on is-I've said too much," he suddenly finished, looking embarrassed. "Suffice to say, our bosses make no sense."
"Tell me about it! I mean, just between you and me, my boss? Complete loon." Blissfully ignoring Stan suddenly scowling, Wendy turned to directly face the receptionist. "I mean seriously, sometimes I just wanna...annoy him sometimes. Do something I know won't hurt enough to put my nametag in danger, but enough to pop a vein."
Stan wasn't scowling any more. In fact, he looked outright interested now.
For his part, the clerk was starting to look nervous, glancing at the other (oblivious) receptionists. "I dunno. I mean, it's kind of a violation of ethics anyway…"
"Oh come on dude! What's more important-a list of things the Man made to keep you down and licking his clown shoes, or the dreams of mostly innocent children?"
The children in question caught on, and both the Pine twins proceeded to invoke the Forbidden Art Of The Puppy Dog Eyes on the clerk.
"...I get it. Still, I don't know how-"
"On a completely unrelated matter," Stan interrupted, looking away innocently. "Did ya know hospitals giving out visitor badges don't actually require you to justify why they're roaming the halls? Unless it's something like live-saving surgery, a person with a badge can just walk around, and say, report on what's going on..."
A mischievous smirk came to the clerk's face. "And how long would this hypothetical visitor be loitering for?"
"Oh...maybe about five days? Really nothing else to do when you only have a certain valuable portion of your time taken up once a week, on Mondays."
"Really? What a shame." With that, the clerk hit a few buttons on his computer, and an electronic signature machine clicked on. "Sign here please. Also note that the hypothetical person would have to check in each day to sign in. These badges are only good until closing time at 10:00. Regulation, ya know? ...Would wonder why they'd want to come back. You came in through the front, right?"
"Than-er, yeah. Needs a good gardener. And a paint job. Maybe a new building," Wendy said as she quickly jotted down her name.
As she passed Stan, she smirked at Stan knowingly.
"You have sleep-learned well, young Sith apprentice," Stan didn't really bother to whisper in reply.
-----------------------
Beyond the welcome center, Bishopgate seemed to resolve the internal dilemma of being a hospital or a restored house-cum-museum.
To be frank, it looked...kind of boring, actually. Once one had seen one hospital interior, one had seen them all. Blue walls, white tile floor, scrubs-wearing medical staff going about the business of doing all the jobs the white-suited actual doctors didn't want, that sort of thing. About the only thing that really stuck out as different was the relatively low amount of medical equipment.
Which kind of made sense, Dipper realized. It was, after all, a facility for...people with different problems, to put it as tactfully as he could.
Wendy, on the other hand, let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding.
A few seconds later, Mabel spoke up. "So what's the plan, bro-bro?"
Dipper adjusted his hat, looked determined, and rose his finger…
Shortly before lowering it. "Wing it," he admitted. "I honestly thought getting in wouldn't be that easy, so part one of my list was 'sneak back.' And none of that involved where to start-well, I was thinking that sealed sub-basement, but that's kind of more somewhere to go after you find out what's waiting there." With the biggest sticks you can find, he internally added.
A few more seconds passed, everyone quietly trying to come up with an idea.
Soos spoke up first. "...Why don't we ask some dude about those weird small angry dudes?"
"Good basis for a plan, but no," Stan replied, shaking his head. "If we go up to people and ask them if they've seen cannibals about half everyone's heights because a fairy super soldier kinda-sorta told us that he was in trouble but his magic prevented him from sayin' more? Yeah, I think that directly conflicts with 'leave here as soon as possible.' We gotta phrase it some other way."
Soos began to stroke his chin. "What about sayin' we're plumbers?"
"...Huh?"
"I can't help but think those small dudes aren't exactly the quietest berserkers in the world. And have you heard your plumbing, Mr. Pines?"
Wendy caught on. "Would this sound happen to be something like a robot dragon roaring, slowed down?"
"I was thinking more VCEP album played all at once, but that works."
"...Knew that rock lining was a bad plan," Stan muttered to no one, holding his head.
Dipper shrugged. "Well, it's a nice start."
With that, he walked up to a blue-shirted, chubby man who didn't seem to be engaged in anything more important. "Hi! I'm Dipper Pines, Precocious Plumber (currently in training)! We were called to...to…" Dipper's voice trailed off as he got a better look at the man as he turned-or more accurately, slumped-to face the boy. "Um…"
First sign that this wasn't actually an orderly was the fact that, on closer inspection, his shirt was made of much less easily washed linen, and had a buttoned collar. In fact, he looked slightly out of place in a medical environment, more like another visitor than anything else. If one paid absolutely no attention to his face.
The man looked utterly disheveled. A beard that spoke to at least a few months of not bothering to even clean it hung limply off his jaw and over his mouth, a goatee that would seem more at home belonging to someone without one. Thinning black hair grew wiry and chaotic, sticking together in clumps. More than anything, was his eyes. His eyes should have been normal-a lighter shade of brown, not unlike Soos'.
Should have been, because the physical eyes were all there were-there was no expression there, no hint of emotion or even the recognition someone was talking to him. His eyes were just...there. Vacant. Not the normal vacancy of boredom, or apathy-vacant, as in empty. For a moment, Dipper was confused as to whether the man was actually alive or the world's most lifelike (and on a related note, creepy) animatronic, until he blinked-something almost obscenely normal compared to the rest of him.
A few seconds of uncomfortable scrutiny (?) later, Dipper cleared his throat. "Um...forget I said anything."
The man shuffled off, zombie-like.
After watching him turn a corner, Dipper shook his head. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume we just met one of the patients."
Wendy, after taking a second for her normal color to return, shook her head. "Great, dude. I needed that reminder of what kind of place this is."
Stan shook his head. "Yeesh. I'm divided between feeling unsettled and feeling sorry for that guy. For being treated here, of all places."
Mabel giggled nervously. "Well, it can't be that bad. I mean, after two bad directors, Bishopgate probably checked out its staff from then on, right? I mean, after the lobotomizer-in-chief and the pulp comic villain wannabe, they had to make sure anyone else they hired is at least-"
"HE'S HERE HE'S HERE!"
The echoing shriek put an end to any rationalizations.
It did however, did start a rather quick sprint from the Shack's employees.
Sadly (or maybe not), the "he" in question was not a Teihiihan. What there was was a wild-haired man being held down by a trio of nurses.
"Mr. Bennings-" grunted a redheaded nurse
"Nonono, you don't understand-"
"Bennings, there's nobody in your-"
"Nonono, he can disappear, I saw him he's there, he's still there-"
The redhead groaned. "How many times-John, Higgins isn't there, he doesn't-"
The patient's-John's-eyes widened, almost bigger than his sockets. "NO NO NO HE'S REAL HE'S THERE I SAW HIM WHY WON'T YOU-"
Another nurse, a man, pulled out a syringe. "Bennings, if you don't comply-"
Bennings' eyes went even wider, desperately struggling to keep his neck away from the needle.
"HEY!"
A task that was helped by Mabel; her sudden shout was more than enough to startled the nurses into loosening their grip. Something Bennings took full advantage of, breaking free in the blink of an eye and then proceeding to latch on to a startled Stan."Please, man, you gotta help me. You gotta get me out of here, Higgins is-"
"John", said the redhead, dangerously. "If you don't get back here right now-"
Bennings ran behind Stan. For a moment, Wendy thought he was using her boss as a hostage, but no-he was acting more like a frightened child hanging behind a parent.
Growling, the three nurses advanced-
"Ex-cuse me!"
Only to grind to a halt in sheer befuddlement at the increasingly furious tween girl in their path.
The male nurse cleared his throat, awkwardly. "Um, can you please-?"
"Can't you see he's scared?" Mabel turned back to the escaped patient. "Hi there...John?"
Bennings poked his head out from behind Stan, who was quite paralyzed by the whole business. "Who's asking?"
"Hi, I'm Mabel," she replied, her voice a lot more soothing than normal. "Someone named Higgins was mean to you?"
"...Higgins is mean?" Bennings laughed, a bitter, hollow sound. "Oh he's a bit more than mean."
"Yeah, yeah. Bullies. They can be real jerks at times, with no good reason." Mabel approached Bennings carefully, nonthreatening. "But every bully has to stop for a while, if only so they can sleep. That gives you a great chance to forget what they did."
"Forget what he did?" Bennings laughed again, even more bitter. "He bullies me because he won't forget, or forgive. Thinks death'd be a bit too easy, after what I did to the lady."
Mabel paled a bit, but kept approaching. "Well, if you're that scared, what he did wasn't right. That's not paying someone back, that's being cruel-"
A very nasty smile came to the male nurse's face. "How much mercy does 'burn someone so bad you can't tell what they look like anymore' deserve?" he asked, a taunting tone in his voice.
Every member of the Shack suddenly fell into a fighting stance, Stan breaking out of Bennings' cling as he did so.
For a moment, nobody moved.
"I DIDN'T MEAN TO!"
That's when Bennings started to cry.
And not just cry, but wail.
He actually curled up on the floor as he did so, hiding his face in his patient gown.
"I...I didn...I didn't…" he choked out between sobs. "I jus...I wanted her to st...stop. She was...she was hurting me…I just..."
"Oh, save it for someone who cares, John." The redhead strode forward-
And shrieked as she was pushed back by Mabel. "Hey! Let him cry."
Bennings' sobs continued. "She...she knew. How much-how much I hate burns. Told her-told her how they held me down...put out their cigars on me…" A sharp inhale. "She...she did it too. Wanted to know how...how burns worked on flesh-flesh, not stone-flesh. But I listened-she was good to me, between burns, if I was good. Put nice thoughts in my head, pulled out the voices,,,"
Dipper lowered his guard slightly. "Um, what did you-"
"But she could be really mean too," Bennings continued, unknowing of Dipper. "She, she could make them louder, make the thoughts worse...danger, danger, always danger. Only felt safe with her, the beautiful lady." He inhaled again. "Didn't get that the burns hurt. So I put kerosene on me, before a burn, so it would catch. Really hurt me, so she didn't have to burn me any more...but it spread…"
Bennings trailed off into more weeping. "I'm sorry...I'm sorry…"
"...Hey," Mabel interrupted. "It's okay."
The mean nurse laughed, a far more cold sound than Bennings. "Seriously? Lady, have you been in a-"
Stan suddenly wheeled around to face Benning's orderlies. "Shut yer yap," he growled.
The nurse's eyes widened as he took a step back.
Mabel put a hand on Bennings' shoulder. "I don't know what you did...but you're sorry, aren't you?" She sat down, patting the weeping man's back. "And it's not like you wanted to hurt her. You just wanted to show her how hurt you were, for something she did. It's not like you deserved to be hurt, is it?"
"Higgins won't believe that," Bennings replied into his legs.
"Have you ever told him what she did?"
Slowly, Bennings stopped shaking. "...No."
"Then, next time you see him, maybe you can tell him. If he still doesn't believe you're sorry enough to be forgiven…" Mabel shrugged. "Well, that's his stubborn old fault, isn't it. And you'll know he's just mean for the sake of being mean."
Languidly, deliberately, Bennings began to unfurl. "T...thanks. But...but I don't wanna face him right now. And I don't want the tranqs. They make me dream."
The redheaded nurse groaned. "Fine. I'll authorize a temporary transfer, you'll-"
"What was that about tranqs?" came an almost melodious female voice from directly behind the nurses.
The syringe presumably full of said tranqs clattered to the ground. All three of the nurses slowly turned around, the muscular and silent one shifting to reveal the speaker.
A tall, olive-skinned woman wearing a white gown with a white nurse's cap smiled in the least friendly manner possible without breaking into a grimace.
"D-d-d-Dee!" stuttered out the mean nurse. "I-I didn't know you were taking an early-"
"I wasn't," Dee replied, her teeth barely moving even as her mouth did. "I heard Mr. Bennings screaming, and, unlike some people I could mention," she said as her greyish eyes flashed over to the redhead, "I am always ready to assist a patient out of a relapse. But that's not why I'm here today."
With that, Dee strode over to the syringe, picking it up in a single, fluid motion. "Mind explaining what's inside this?"
"Er...Um...Antipsychotics?" the male nurse replied, desperately.
"Then why, oh why, was Mr. Bennings telling this young lady about tranquilizers just then, hm? Tranquilizers, it should be mentioned, being the kind of thing you inject into struggling patients?"
The redhead gave a nervous giggle. "Well...er, you know how Bennings gets during an episode. After the latest Higgins encounter, he got himself worked up, and actively started clawing at the door, so we-"
"Okay, that? Was actively offensive to me as a liar." Stan said, frowning. "We didn't see the whole thing, but he was on the other side long before ya pulled that plunger out."
Both of the speaking nurses paled, as Dee's not-a-smile twitched.
"Mr. Bennings...could you please go to the comfort room? After what these...fine people just did, I think you deserve it. Also, I don't think you like me screaming."
Bennings nodded, before backing off down a corridor.
As soon as he was out of sight, the white-gowned nurse lunged. It took Mabel a second to realize she didn't actually attack the nurses, merely snarl in a way that reminded her unpleasantly of an enraged dog. "The hell were you two doing!?"
The redhead gulped. "I was scared! He was waving around that paint of his like it was a club or something-"
"You mean the paint palette? The cardboard, safety one? Oh, I can see why that would be really scary. You might smudge your makeup!"
"Er, well, yeah, but he was-"
"Protip, Sam," Dee cut in. "The next time you fall asleep on the job, read the diagnosis to help you doze off? Helping Mr. Bennings realize that accidentally stepping on someone's foot isn't an act worthy of suicidal ideation is actually what we're trying to help him with-or we would be, if I didn't have the only brain not shoved three feet up my own rear end. Or, in the case of Ed here," she said, turning to face the mean nurse, "deciding that ever since the court declared that I am not allowed within 500 feet of a puppy, I get my fun kicking the patients instead."
"C-Come on Dee!" Ed, sweating profusely. "I mean, I know we've had our disagreements over the years, but Bennings-I mean, he doesn't lash out now, but-"
"Save it, numbnuts," Dee cut in, dismissively waving him off. "Just admit to yourself you're an evil little prick and stop looking like a self-righteous, stupid little prick. As for you, Jenn…"
Dee's rant trailed off as she turned to the large nurse, who had remained utterly silent. "...you know what, I don't care. Just...get out. Clean the bedpans. I'll think of exactly what part of you three I haven't maimed yet later. Go."
The three scurried off-or rather, two-and-a-half, as Jenn's pace was rather slow.
Dee inhaled, sighed, and closed her eyes, rubbing her temple. After a few repeats of that, she turned to face the Mystery Shack, a slightly less fake smile coming to her face.
"Hi! You must be visitors. Sorry you had to see that, my staff is composed of morons, wannabe supervillains, or the latter being a function of the former. I'm Head Nurse Diwa Sykes, please call me Dee. I'll be right with you...after I smoke. If you want to join me outside, be my guest."
The first thing people tended to notice about Bishopgate's grounds behind the East Wing (beside being rather cool for summer) was the fountain in the middle of the stone plaza. Namely, the sheer amount of abuse it had apparently weathered. Whatever elegant design the marble once was, it had long since become a cracked, asymmetric mess of barely-standing debris, yet one that somehow still had water flowing through it in a somewhat constant stream.
Next to the obvious symbolism, a somewhat less sad-looking stone bench sat, where Nurse Dee had proceeded to park herself, cigarette in mouth, attempting to strike up a wooden match.
Dipper cleared his throat. "You know, that isn't exactly a healthy-"
"I know, kid." The match went up, quickly followed by the white cylinder. "But I'll be honest here: As self-destructive habits go, it's better in the short term than alcohol. Which is why I advocate getting a job you don't loathe-the less stress, the less cancer sticks, hooch, or drugs you feel the need to torture your body with to forget your life." She sighed, blowing out a puff of smoke that curled into mildly interesting shapes.
"...Then why don't ya just quit?" Stan replied, scratching his head.
"You saw that argument, right?" Dee grimaced. "I'm pretty much the only restraining bolt on the staff that won't quit and won't be fired."
Stan tilted his head. "'Won't be fired'? Who's the bright spark-"
"Don't ask."
For the next minute or so, everyone just sat on benches as Dee rolled her cig around her mouth. Eventually, she took it out to speak again.
"Anyway, I forgot to thank you with Bennings back there-he gets the short end of an already stubby stick a lot. So, thanks."
Dee attempted to smile at that. Attempted, because the overall effect with a lit cigarette in her mouth came off as less 'thankful' and more 'relieved that somebody with a soul still existed in her immediate vicinity.'
"...Good
"...Er," Wendy began, tapping her fingers together. "Is it kinda rude to ask what, um, he's in for? He seemed...jumpy?"
"Paranoid schizophrenic," Dee replied, taking a draw of her cigarette. "He was always one, but it got aggravated from borderline manageable to, well, him now, when he met the mysterious Jane Doe he keeps calling the 'beautiful lady'. Instant institutionalization, just add abuse." She exhaled before laughing bitterly. "Actually a big murder case couple years back, mostly because it was yellow journalism fodder. Pretty young white girl, burned alive? Network news eats that cr...crud right up. Excuse my language and cynicism."
She sighed. "Of course, his friends actually convinced him to plead not guilty, but eventually recanted their alibis once they saw him breaking apart. Probably the worst thing they could have done; now he thinks he's utterly irredeemable. Hence, Higgins; his own personal torturer, existing purely to hurt him back for killing his 'daughter.'" Her expression turned dark. "Of course, those three," she added, growling out the emphasis, "think what he really needed was some real-life torturers, because it's not like we have insanity pleas for reasons or anything like that."
She muttered something unintelligible as she tapped the cigarette in an ashtray.
"...Well, it can't be all bad," Soos replied, trying to smile. "He's got someone who cares about him, even if they don't."
She smirked. "Thanks. But really, I'm a nurse. It's my job to give a...mouse's butt whether a patient lives or dies." Her face fell. "Only one who actually does the job at all, it feels like."
She took another draft, apparently deep in thought. "Whoever you're seeing-I pity them. I really do."
"Actually," Stan said, shrugging. "Wendy here is doing a summer school report on how mental health evolved through the years, and since this is the closest mental hospital…"
Dee rose an eyebrow. "Seriously? Why you'd bring your grandkids then?"
"Grand niece and nephew. They're actually my editors," Wendy began. "They're tweens, sure, but they've got a gift for fact checking. Skipped a couple grades, both of them."
The eyebrow rose a little further, as Dee looked over at Mabel, who was currently imitating a rather wall-eyed face on the fountain before giggling. "O...kay."
She shook her head. "Here's a citation they can put in: Bishopgate is a barely functioning, corrupt, and mold-eaten pile of junk barely held together by a combination of inertia and trustees beating their heads against it, and has been since its foundation. About any other asylum is probably better than Bishopgate. An attic is probably better than Bishopgate-at least whoever is chained up there is next to family." She laughed, even more caustically.
An awkward silence followed that.
"...Bad week?", asked Wendy sympathetically.
"Especially," Dee rejointed, leaning back. "I hear they can't fund the counseling program anymore, so that's one less rope holding my patients from offing-maybe I shouldn't say that in front of your...er, grand niblings," she hurriedly finished.
"Huh. Didn't know that was a word. And..?"
"We're cool. Can't exactly be any more morbid than what we just saw."
Mabel thought on that. "...Well, maybe not cool cool, but listening to someone finally being able to complain can't damage our faith in humanity more than those jerks did."
"Hey, look on the bright side! You don't have to work with them."
Another grievance, another draft of smoke. "If it comes off like I'm venting-I am. I know I'm an utter stranger and all, but...I can't pay for a therapist. If I can get someone to break free of this tar pit of a hospital and get a lot off my chest at the same time…" She shrugged. "Honestly, this place? Is a zombie. Living despite ceasing all vital functions, mindlessly lurching across medical schools, finding bright young minds to devour and leaving them the walking dead." She motioned to herself. "Present company very much included."
Another puff. Idly, Soos began to wonder if they made cigarettes that lasted that long on purpose. Didn't seem smart for a tobacco company.
"...Actually," Mabel began, feeling very awkward, "We heard about some...other things after we started the off-site internet investigation."
Dee's eyebrow rose again. "Would this happen to involve Barbie Shrink?"
"No, but-" Mabel stopped. "Wait, what?"
"Ah. sorry. Director McClusky." Dee shrugged. "Probably rude to talk about her like that, but screw it, she deserves it."
Mabel's eyes narrowed. "...Excuse me, what did you just say?"
"That she's an idiot?" Dee gave another one of her bitter laughs. "She's every vapid blonde stereotype in the world if you aged them up and removed all sense of joy or curiosity? Miss, life lesson; there are some people in this world who are good, some who are evil, most in between, but there's at least a few who morality-free because they're genuinely useless. McClusky is in that last category."
Mabel narrowed her eyes a little more.
"...Moving on," Dee said an obviously uncomfortable tone. "What did you hear?"
"That there were lots of weird things going on at Bishopgate," Soos replied. "Like, er, very angry small dudes causin' trouble for the patients and-"
There was suddenly a large fwoosh sound as Dee inhaled a bit more smoke than she probably wanted.
After a brief coughing fit, Dee cleared her throat, putting out her cigarette. "Oh, uh, that? Yeah, don't know when that started. Think it was a schizophrenic delusion that got a life of its own. Happens, you know?"
Before the Shack could continue questioning, Dee sprang to her feet. "Anyway, smoke break's over." With that, the nurse retrieved a phone from a back pocket. "Want me to lead you to the library?"
"Nah, we're cool. Thanks."
"Okay then. Please enjoy your visit. I have rounds." With that, Bishopgate's long-suffering head nurse wheeled off.
"...I get the sense she's a person who needs more hugs," Mabel said, watching her pace grow increasingly swift.
"I get the sense she's hidin' something." Stan stroked his beard stubble. "She's not very good at cover-ups. Probably not good for her lungs either."
Dipper nodded. "Ten bucks she's going to be an obstacle in our investigation."
"Fifteen she's key witness." Mabel replied.
"...Knew we should have gone with 'great aunt'." Soos muttered.
The rest of the initial investigations didn't go much better.
"Well, apparently a Lara Woronov thinks she's a nurse." Wendy sipped as the Bishopgate cafeteria soda, which was quite possibly the flattest thing she had ever tasted. "Which I was only told aftershe led us in a grand circle through the second floor."
"Stan and I didn't have much better luck," Dipper said as he inspected a sad-looking sandwich. "We found something weird, but it was in the gift shop."
Said thing was a rather creepy-looking picture book, with the design of a tall, ominous mountain with an equally ominous castle on it, entitled Deildegast in ominous letters. Ominously.
"Not that great of a story, but I got new Halloween exhibits from it." Stan shrugged.
Wendy narrowed her eyes at the book. "Who in their right mind-?"
A passing man in a patient gown cleared his throat.
"Right, bad figure of speech. Sorry, dude."
The patient grumbled and walked off, muttering something that included 'school' and 'just like'.
Wendy coughed. "Let's try that again. Who...can be such a jerk they'd get something like that for a kid?"
"The kind of people who go on tours in the shady insane asylums with creepy pasts?" Mabel guessed.
"...I'd amend that to 'anyone who goes on a hospital tour to begin with,' but that's me." Wendy sighed. "So, to recap; we have no leads, the only sa-competent nurse is in on the cover-up, we can only investigate because the front desk hates his boss, which means any continued investigations are hanging by a thread that will be torn if someone less bored gets a shift when we're getting the day's visitor badges." She sighed, slumping on the table. "Anything I missed?"
"The one weird thing we did get doesn't even rhyme?" Stan opened the book, revealing a comic spread of a the mountain and a cloaked figure that lay beneath it. "Seriously, the closest thing this thing comes is rhymin' 'ghosts' with itself. 'Here is a mountain, a mountain'-"
"Boss, please. Not in here." Wendy groaned, holding her head.
"Really, dudes, the main problem is we didn't come in here with a good plan." Soos shrugged. "Everything we thought of was a way to actually get in. Now that we are in...we had no idea where to start lookin'."
"And the cover-up being tripped." Stan replied. "Probably need to be hushed on why we're actually here from now on; I don't think our real reason's gone up the chain, but I'm bettin' Dee hassomeone she doesn't get sick talking to."
"...Can we do that tomorrow?" Mabel said pointing at her brother. "I think today's taken a lot out of Dipper."
For indeed, Dipper's reply to this was his snoring being suddenly cut off. "Huh-? I-auuugh."
A brief dash to the bathroom to wipe possibly-expired sandwich mayonnaise off his face later, Dipper came back, suddenly looking exhausted.
"...You been gettin' enough sleep?" Soos asked. "I don't think that soda has that much caffeine…"
"It...it doesn't have caffeine, Soos." Dipper rubbed his eyes. "I don't know. I was fine when we sat down, but now? Feels like someone snuck up behind me and hit me with a brick."
"I know the feelin'" Stan replied in sympathy. "Used to stay up late all the time, readin' comics. Never worked out later in the school day."
"I know, it's just...oooh, head's throbbing, head's throbbing." Dipper began to massage his temple, groaning.
"Well, that's probably our cue to get done with for the night," Wendy said, a bit more eager than she had probably intended. "Sleeping arrangements, boss?"
"Well, I didn't take the RV, so I think it's motel-town for the week," Stan said as he pulled out a brochure. "Thankfully, I know a place with a good-ish health record. Also; bunk beds."
"Top bed!"
Here is a mountain, a mountain of ghosts.
Dipper blinked at the sign, frowning. "Thanks for the directions, Captain No-Help." A little more cinching of his coat later, and trudged on through the snowdrift, towards the softly glowing mountain.
And here on the mountain, there is a castle.
Dipper rolled his eyes and pushed through the big oak doors of said castle, ignoring the wind. Or was that the moans? Whatever, it's not like the spacious foyer, filled with what had to be a dozen clocks, was any less eerie.
And beneath the castle there is a king.
A sarcophagus, decorated with what appeared to be a crucifix-topped altar torn in two, with a coffin with a star topping it on either side engraved on its lid, waited in the center of the cavern. Nodding an affirmative to the others, Dipper reached for a crowbar.
The king who built the castle on the-
"What do you want?"
And just like that, the spell was broken, and Dipper realized exactly what the "others" were in this case.
He wasn't sure how he managed to negotiate the stairs in his blind panic, nor cared.
A few minutes later, in the middle of a now rather damaged garden of blue roses, Dipper shivered. Of course, he had to take off his coat when helping those...things. It was only the middle of...summer…?
Confused, the boy checked his surroundings. The flower bushes looked perfectly green, so what the heck was up with the snow-
Relief surfed through Dipper as the memories of being in the car came rushing back. He had fallen asleep, hadn't he? Well, that was a relief. The whole Teihiihan business must've been getting to him, or maybe a bit of mayo went down when his face made friends with that sandwich.
Right then, nicer dream. First of all, let's get that snow to become...grass…
Didn't seem to be listening.
Okay...time for a hard reset then. Dipper closed his eyes, thought about waking up, and…
Oh. Dream didn't stop at all.
Cruuuuud.
Okay, apparently there was some sort of dream parasite he picked up. Dipper began to scour his memory for info in the journals about creatures that kept you trapped in sleep. Succubi? No, a younger version of Wendy would be present if one of them was out and about, and the dream would be more pleasant besides. Sandman? The gothic castle and theme of unearthing a dead king fit, but as far as Dipper knew, he wasn't grieving for someone at all, let alone obsessively enough for a ghost to smell and insert itself into his brain. Night hag? No, they sent you into sleep paralysis at some point, and besides, didn't they usually show up in animal form-
"You didn't hear me."
Slowly, Dipper spun around to face the source of that deep, growly voice.
The dog that had to be the size of Stan's car breathed in his face, a bit of shadow escaping its mouth like breath fogging the air.
"...Yipe."
"I ask again. What do you want?"
A few breaths, and Dipper calmed down. "Okay. Okay. I know you're hungry, but I haven't had much sleep lately, so can we make a deal? You let me have eight hours now, and you can hag me the two nights after-"
"What. Do you. Want. From Bishopgate. Thornslave."
Dipper nearly discovered what happened when you fainted in a dream right then in there, the near-roar of the shadow-dog's voice ringing in his ears. "If this is your home-kind of a jerk move to attack mental patients, even if you're starving-we're trying to save it from monsters who might eat-"
"You little-"
Dipper could say no more before the dog knocking him to the ground, paw cutting off his air supply.
"Don't you dare try that again. Lie to me all you want, but if you..blaspheme by telling me you're here to help again, I will sell you to my Keeper. Tell me, thornslave; how much you wanna bet your master cares enough about you to buy you back from him?"
"M-Master? K-Keeper?" Dipper choked out. "I...I don't know what you're talking…"
Slowly, the dream turned darker, and darker, as the young investigator's dream-lungs began to lose air. All he could feel was an interesting sensation-like the dog was sniffing the inside of his skull.
A sensation that suddenly stopped.
"You…You're really a child?"
Dipper became aware of the pressure on his throat lift. A quick gasp of air later, and the blur cleared.
There was no shadow-hound. But there was its voice.
"So. Not a servant of the others. But maybe a hunter? The Spear and Shield, claiming yet more of our magic is theirs? Bear Lodge having a bring-your-kids-to-hunt day? Or just some reckless and selfish idiot who told you the real world is just like a Goosebumps novel?
"Never mind. It's But tell whatever sociopathic dumbass who thinks that sending kids in first is a good plan that he needs protection against dream-poison. As tempting as it is to just let him drown in it, I'm not going to let a kid suffer for his mistakes."
The sniffing started again, followed quickly by...not biting, but definitely the sense that it had its mouth on parts. A quick yanking feeling and-
The clocks surrounding the garden shattered, and Dipper suddenly felt very awake. More awake than he had been for a week. Even asleep.
"But tell him this; Investigate all you like. May be something I haven't found. But the instant you step on the toes of my freehold, make a list of everything you can lose. You're going to mark each and every item off, one by one. Except, of course, your life. It's a waste of good sorrow."
"What the heck does a spear-"
And now Dipper was awake. Shoot.
Given the relative darkness, he guessed it was night by now. Given the material above him, Dipper supposed he was in the bunk bed now.
"...Hello? Is anyone still awake? ...No?"
Yawning, Dipper slipped out. Noise would probably wake up the others, so all he needed to do was just walk over to the bathroom, brush his teeth and maybe put on some deodorant. Showers would probably wake up the other lodgers in the room, as he doubted Stan would spring for multiple rooms.
So, as quietly as he could, he made his way over to the bathroom. Slowly, deliberately, he opened the door-
"WAAAAH!"
Thankfully for everyone still in the car, Stan had parked before Dipper catapulted out of sleep.
"WHOA, WHAT, WHEN-Oh hi Dipper. Show up without pants to the math test again?"
"Soos!" Relief flooded through Dipper. "You're alive!"
Immediately, the handyman's bemusement evaporated. "Knew that mayo had gone bad."
"Oh man, Soos, it was awful! The dream, not the mayo, but-there was this bathroom, see, and as soon as I opened, there was this black thing with these huge, egg-white eyes, and then-oof."
Soos used the sudden hug to pat Dipper on the back. "Hey. Whatever it was, it didn't happen out here in the real world."
"...Thanks," Dipper said, returning the pat.
Then the rest of the dream came flooding back.
"...But I definitely think someone is out here in the real world. And they are angry."
A/N: I have nothing to say here, except I am slooow. Sorry.
The Plot Begins! And now I don't have to worry about the actual show messing up my timeline!
...Which stinks, but really, it's probably better as the self-contained two-season series it was imagined as, honestly. All neat and relatively tidy. Besides, it's not like it has an open ending a la Twin Peaks, am I right?
Also, given revelations in The Last Mabelcorn and Weirdmageddon? Bill Cipher is totally one of the Gentry himself, or at least a powerful spirit. Maybe an acamoth. For those of you who don't know Changeling, let that be ominous foreshadowing, along with the fact that the unicorns are pretty Gentry themselves.
(Except for the part about acamoth. That particular segment of the nWoD doesn't figure in this story. Probably a good thing for our intrepid heroes. Ask me if you wanna know more. Not the part about Gentry though, that's spoilers. I will say the bubble seal is a perfectly good mental image of how reality scabs over in the nWoD. And Mabel's bubble-world a pretty good mental image of why people willingly serve more trustworthy acamoth).
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Chapter 3: The Doors to Dusk
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Chapter 3: The Doors to Dusk
-----------------------
It wasn't the most eventful drive, all things considered. Pretty much the only thing that happened was everyone realizing that Stan's car was not meant for journeys on the interstate, however brief (the thing bounced at higher speeds-apparently his mother had this "interstate seance" scam). Still, moderate-to-severe discomfort and head bruises aside, events were ultimately nothing of real import on the relatively brief (it was an hour north of town) journey to Bishopgate.
The immediate approach to Bishopgate was where things started getting interesting, in a Chinese backhanded well-wishing kind of way.
For one, the dirt road that lead off the exit ramp was what could be called light-to-heavy forested. As in, it started off completely clear, then a few feet into the road there were tightly packed trees on either side. This gave the road a rather unpleasant look of being a great, green, sideways maw, especially given the...unique growth of some of the branches, hanging over the road.
Speaking of the road-
"Grunk-gah!-le Stan? Does your-ow!-car have trouble wit-sorry Wendy-dirt too?"
"No, it's just-oof-this darn road. Seriously, how long-ouch!-since they filled in the potholes, twenty years agoooooo I am going to sue them! For semi-legit reasons!"
And nobody in the car could tell if it was just them, but the path seemed to get bumpier as they got closer to the hospital. Almost as if the road was trying to warn them away.
Finally, the car got past the maw, and in the fading sunlight was a large, columned mansion that had to be Bishopgate itself, looming on top of an enormous hill that had to be the mysterious mound.
Really, the asylum seemed incomplete, somehow. Everything about the place seemed to be the sort of thing that lightning would dramatically flash behind as the sky vented its tearful wrath upon the land. For one, its position on the mound was slightly skewed towards the driveway, giving it the appearance of a crouching cougar, ready to pounce. The columns did not help, being an off-white color that was probably intended to be comforting by a person who had no idea what comforting meant. The windows on what had to be the twenty or so rooms facing the street were narrow, giving the impression that the hospital was glaring at any approaching it with way, way too many eyes. As if the giant clock on the top of the overhand didn't bring to mind a hungry cyclops already..
Which wasn't even getting into the yard. To be frank, it seemed whoever the current director was of Bishopgate, they had forgotten that such a thing as a "groundskeeper" existed. Or...actually no, one who would have taken a good look and quit would be more likely to actually burn the foliage down, in the probably correct assumption bare earth or ash would look less menacing. Probably less lazy as well.
The hedgerows between the three staircases leading up to the doors had grown so wild that it was difficult to tell where one line of bushes ended and another began, when the rows were placedbehind each other. The hedges also seemed unsure if they wanted to be the familiar boxiness of Euclidean geometry or not, leading to the overall effect of an organic, leafy heap of disorganized car parts and tentacles threading out of them at semi-random areas. Speaking of tentacles, the asylum's face had apparently developed quite the ivy problem, with the thickest individual vines any worker at the Mystery Shack had ever seen. The way the plants had grown almost looked like a pair of hands with the world's longest fingers, trailing up Bishopgate's face like the asylum itself was bemoaning its state. Or possibly being held back from attacking.
"...That is the angriest building I have ever seen," Soos put succinctly.. "And I've seen the Tunnel of Loathe at Dystopia World."
"We sure this place isn't abandoned utterly?" Wendy asked, slightly hopefully.
"No such luck." Stan pointed the Staff Only parking, revealing a nearly-full lot. Perhaps the only full lot in the entire grounds.
Dipper took a glance at the building. "What are those on the door?"
"The Six Saints," Wendy replied automatically. "Shortly after Bishopgate became, well, Bishopgate, it seems one of the original owners got someone to make new doors with Catholic patrons of mental health carved on them. Website says it was his way of blessing the new hospital's endeavors and wishing a speedy recovery to all."
"Huh." Dipper leaned back. "Weird. They looked kinda familiar. Grandpa Shermy really did have a famous old dead guy face."
By now the car had pulled to a stop, so Mabel poked her head out of the window for a closer look. "...I don't remember that picture of Gampy being so...camera-shy."
Curious, Stan pulled out his binoculars to get a closer look before he forgot.
Sure enough, even the supposed blessing of Bishopgate by its original owners looked a little off-kilter. There was nothing overly horrifying about the doors (really, the images were somewhat uninspired, as sacred icons of holy people went), but something about the way they were posed gave Stan the sense that the Six Saints felt like they're really rather be somewhere else. The rightmost pair had a pair of cloaked figures, one man and one woman, who appeared to be caught mid-step on their way out of the picture. The center pair were both men, an older one almost seeming to push on the fourth wall in hopes it would give way, and a younger one with a hat, learning on his cane with apparent resignation to his post. The leftmost pair featured a man with his cloak drawn in such a way like he was attempting to be as invisible as the door would allow him to be, and a woman whose arm outstretched to the heavens reeked less of prayer than with a sense of "seriously God, why?"
"...Something tells me whoever bought them didn't pay enough up front," Stan muttered.
-----------------------
As a final bit of disorientation, going through the center doors to the visitor center (whose Saints, according to the placard nearby, were Eustochium of Padua and Benedict Joseph Labre) was such a jarring shift of scenery Dipper briefly wondered if he had wandered through a portal to an alternate universe (it wouldn't be surprising).
Whereas the exterior of Bishopgate looked like a restored mansion and museum, the inside was about as sterile as a hospital could get-tasteful blue walls, a large, comfy sofa and not so comfy cushioned metal chairs, a U-shaped welcome desk with staff dutifully monitoring their card game programs, vending machines, even a magazine rack. It looked like just about any city clinic in the world.
At first glance. On second inspection, there was, among other things, places where the brown marble tiles met hardwood, in the alcoves were tarnished metal figurines that reeked of an era before the Civil War, whose most new features were the glass casings and the "DO NOT TOUCH" signs, and hanging above the whole scene was a great chandelier that immediately put the movie buffs of the Shack in mind of a Roaring Twenties concert hall (and perhaps was in one once at some point, given the placard under it credited it to Director Weaver).
Also, there was a sign explaining how to schedule tours of the grounds. A History of Mental Health in a Half-Mile, according to the promotional image.
At least there wasn't much of a line. Not a lot of people checking in friends and family to the live-in mental hospital, thank all that was holy. With entities like Bill Cipher around, that could easily have been a problem. Stan walked up to the center receptionist, and-
"Not my department. The check-ins are the left doors heading into the building."
And whatever he was about to say remained unsaid. That kind of flippant attitude was something it was a tad surprising to be on the other end of.
Soos cleared his throat. "Actually, dude, we're not, uh, admitting anyone, we just want to ask, uh, a few questions."
A few seconds later, the headphone wearing receptionist apparently realized they weren't leaving and groaned, clicking something on his screen before swiveling to face the Shack's employees.
"What can I help you with," he said, too flatly to be considered a question.
Of course there was something off about the clerks too. Why wouldn't there be? Unlike the vague menace of Bishopgate's exterior, though, this desk jockey was a far more mundane kind of off. To put it simply, the guy was way, way too young to be hospital staff, seemingly. He didn't even seem like he had graduated high school yet, let alone had the degrees needed to be a part of a medical institution. Admittedly, he just worked the front desk, but somehow, the Shack felt there was more to that job than "take notes. refer to someone who can actually do something about it, play solitaire." The expression on his face didn't seem out of place on an overworked secretary, but the Shack was the entire customer base there-he could at least attempt to look interested for a few minutes.
"We were wondering if you allowed visitors to people who don't have anybody in here," Soos continued. "See, the dudes over are taking a bit of summer school, and for the class report on Monday is on modern mental health. We were-"
"Non-patient visiting hours are on Saturday," the clerk interrupted, reaching for his headphones. "Either look it up, or make a good excuse. Bye."
"Hey!" Stan interrupted, slamming his magic-eight ball walking baton over the headphones. "What's that on the sign?"
The clerk, for his part, didn't seem to bother with being annoyed. "If you're here about the tour, our guides are currently on summer break."
"S-summer break!?" Stan slid the headphones a little farther away. "How does that make any sense? Hiking the price, sure, but-"
"Hey, man, I'm just the receptionist. I don't know everyone's number. So, if you'll-"
Stan drew the headphones further away. "Look kid, I've dealt with a lot of front desks before in my life. And I can tell ya kid-you aren't cut out as a liar. I don't care how much paperwork you think you're avoiding, but it's gotta be less than answerin' a complaint. So, shyster to shyster-what's the real reason?"
The clerk looked up, popping a bit of gum in his mouth and chewing thoughtfully.
"...Can't tell ya. Bonus is at stake."
"Can't argue with that," Stan admitted, releasing the headphones.
"Excuse me", Mabel interrupted. "But can I plead the case of, um, really precocious little girls here?"
The clerk looked down, an instant of surprise briefly breaking his mask of late-teenage indifference. "Um, sure."
Mabel made her best 'I am a cute girl, please pity me' face. "Pleeease? It's really important we get this scholarship."
"No can do, dude."
Okay, time to really turn on the Sad Cute. "But mister-"
"How long until you have to turn in the report?"
Oh. Didn't rehearse that.
Oh dear.
Suddenly, Wendy cleared her throat. "Actually, two weeks. It's a summer term paper."
"Okay, guys," the clerk began, rolling over to his computer, beginning to type away. "I'll have you in for...the 20th? Sounds good?"
"Wendy, what are you doing?" Dipper whispered through the side of his mouth.
The redhead paid no attention, though, instead leaning on the desk. "Awesome. Not really what we'd like, giving the Work Now Lazy Later principle, but hey, it's the thought that counts."
The clerk was paying full attention now. "Yeah man, I feel for ya. Really, you know the worst part about this job?"
"I'm gonna guess the waiting"
"Worse! The waiting, and not having a clue why." The clerk leaned back in his seat towards Wendy, apparently thankful to have someone to rant to. "I mean, come on guys! We're the guys whose job it is to get someone else to take over, you could at least tell us why the tour nobody goes on is-I've said too much," he suddenly finished, looking embarrassed. "Suffice to say, our bosses make no sense."
"Tell me about it! I mean, just between you and me, my boss? Complete loon." Blissfully ignoring Stan suddenly scowling, Wendy turned to directly face the receptionist. "I mean seriously, sometimes I just wanna...annoy him sometimes. Do something I know won't hurt enough to put my nametag in danger, but enough to pop a vein."
Stan wasn't scowling any more. In fact, he looked outright interested now.
For his part, the clerk was starting to look nervous, glancing at the other (oblivious) receptionists. "I dunno. I mean, it's kind of a violation of ethics anyway…"
"Oh come on dude! What's more important-a list of things the Man made to keep you down and licking his clown shoes, or the dreams of mostly innocent children?"
The children in question caught on, and both the Pine twins proceeded to invoke the Forbidden Art Of The Puppy Dog Eyes on the clerk.
"...I get it. Still, I don't know how-"
"On a completely unrelated matter," Stan interrupted, looking away innocently. "Did ya know hospitals giving out visitor badges don't actually require you to justify why they're roaming the halls? Unless it's something like live-saving surgery, a person with a badge can just walk around, and say, report on what's going on..."
A mischievous smirk came to the clerk's face. "And how long would this hypothetical visitor be loitering for?"
"Oh...maybe about five days? Really nothing else to do when you only have a certain valuable portion of your time taken up once a week, on Mondays."
"Really? What a shame." With that, the clerk hit a few buttons on his computer, and an electronic signature machine clicked on. "Sign here please. Also note that the hypothetical person would have to check in each day to sign in. These badges are only good until closing time at 10:00. Regulation, ya know? ...Would wonder why they'd want to come back. You came in through the front, right?"
"Than-er, yeah. Needs a good gardener. And a paint job. Maybe a new building," Wendy said as she quickly jotted down her name.
As she passed Stan, she smirked at Stan knowingly.
"You have sleep-learned well, young Sith apprentice," Stan didn't really bother to whisper in reply.
-----------------------
Beyond the welcome center, Bishopgate seemed to resolve the internal dilemma of being a hospital or a restored house-cum-museum.
To be frank, it looked...kind of boring, actually. Once one had seen one hospital interior, one had seen them all. Blue walls, white tile floor, scrubs-wearing medical staff going about the business of doing all the jobs the white-suited actual doctors didn't want, that sort of thing. About the only thing that really stuck out as different was the relatively low amount of medical equipment.
Which kind of made sense, Dipper realized. It was, after all, a facility for...people with different problems, to put it as tactfully as he could.
Wendy, on the other hand, let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding.
A few seconds later, Mabel spoke up. "So what's the plan, bro-bro?"
Dipper adjusted his hat, looked determined, and rose his finger…
Shortly before lowering it. "Wing it," he admitted. "I honestly thought getting in wouldn't be that easy, so part one of my list was 'sneak back.' And none of that involved where to start-well, I was thinking that sealed sub-basement, but that's kind of more somewhere to go after you find out what's waiting there." With the biggest sticks you can find, he internally added.
A few more seconds passed, everyone quietly trying to come up with an idea.
Soos spoke up first. "...Why don't we ask some dude about those weird small angry dudes?"
"Good basis for a plan, but no," Stan replied, shaking his head. "If we go up to people and ask them if they've seen cannibals about half everyone's heights because a fairy super soldier kinda-sorta told us that he was in trouble but his magic prevented him from sayin' more? Yeah, I think that directly conflicts with 'leave here as soon as possible.' We gotta phrase it some other way."
Soos began to stroke his chin. "What about sayin' we're plumbers?"
"...Huh?"
"I can't help but think those small dudes aren't exactly the quietest berserkers in the world. And have you heard your plumbing, Mr. Pines?"
Wendy caught on. "Would this sound happen to be something like a robot dragon roaring, slowed down?"
"I was thinking more VCEP album played all at once, but that works."
"...Knew that rock lining was a bad plan," Stan muttered to no one, holding his head.
Dipper shrugged. "Well, it's a nice start."
With that, he walked up to a blue-shirted, chubby man who didn't seem to be engaged in anything more important. "Hi! I'm Dipper Pines, Precocious Plumber (currently in training)! We were called to...to…" Dipper's voice trailed off as he got a better look at the man as he turned-or more accurately, slumped-to face the boy. "Um…"
First sign that this wasn't actually an orderly was the fact that, on closer inspection, his shirt was made of much less easily washed linen, and had a buttoned collar. In fact, he looked slightly out of place in a medical environment, more like another visitor than anything else. If one paid absolutely no attention to his face.
The man looked utterly disheveled. A beard that spoke to at least a few months of not bothering to even clean it hung limply off his jaw and over his mouth, a goatee that would seem more at home belonging to someone without one. Thinning black hair grew wiry and chaotic, sticking together in clumps. More than anything, was his eyes. His eyes should have been normal-a lighter shade of brown, not unlike Soos'.
Should have been, because the physical eyes were all there were-there was no expression there, no hint of emotion or even the recognition someone was talking to him. His eyes were just...there. Vacant. Not the normal vacancy of boredom, or apathy-vacant, as in empty. For a moment, Dipper was confused as to whether the man was actually alive or the world's most lifelike (and on a related note, creepy) animatronic, until he blinked-something almost obscenely normal compared to the rest of him.
A few seconds of uncomfortable scrutiny (?) later, Dipper cleared his throat. "Um...forget I said anything."
The man shuffled off, zombie-like.
After watching him turn a corner, Dipper shook his head. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume we just met one of the patients."
Wendy, after taking a second for her normal color to return, shook her head. "Great, dude. I needed that reminder of what kind of place this is."
Stan shook his head. "Yeesh. I'm divided between feeling unsettled and feeling sorry for that guy. For being treated here, of all places."
Mabel giggled nervously. "Well, it can't be that bad. I mean, after two bad directors, Bishopgate probably checked out its staff from then on, right? I mean, after the lobotomizer-in-chief and the pulp comic villain wannabe, they had to make sure anyone else they hired is at least-"
"HE'S HERE HE'S HERE!"
The echoing shriek put an end to any rationalizations.
It did however, did start a rather quick sprint from the Shack's employees.
-----------------------
Sadly (or maybe not), the "he" in question was not a Teihiihan. What there was was a wild-haired man being held down by a trio of nurses.
"Mr. Bennings-" grunted a redheaded nurse
"Nonono, you don't understand-"
"Bennings, there's nobody in your-"
"Nonono, he can disappear, I saw him he's there, he's still there-"
The redhead groaned. "How many times-John, Higgins isn't there, he doesn't-"
The patient's-John's-eyes widened, almost bigger than his sockets. "NO NO NO HE'S REAL HE'S THERE I SAW HIM WHY WON'T YOU-"
Another nurse, a man, pulled out a syringe. "Bennings, if you don't comply-"
Bennings' eyes went even wider, desperately struggling to keep his neck away from the needle.
"HEY!"
A task that was helped by Mabel; her sudden shout was more than enough to startled the nurses into loosening their grip. Something Bennings took full advantage of, breaking free in the blink of an eye and then proceeding to latch on to a startled Stan."Please, man, you gotta help me. You gotta get me out of here, Higgins is-"
"John", said the redhead, dangerously. "If you don't get back here right now-"
Bennings ran behind Stan. For a moment, Wendy thought he was using her boss as a hostage, but no-he was acting more like a frightened child hanging behind a parent.
Growling, the three nurses advanced-
"Ex-cuse me!"
Only to grind to a halt in sheer befuddlement at the increasingly furious tween girl in their path.
The male nurse cleared his throat, awkwardly. "Um, can you please-?"
"Can't you see he's scared?" Mabel turned back to the escaped patient. "Hi there...John?"
Bennings poked his head out from behind Stan, who was quite paralyzed by the whole business. "Who's asking?"
"Hi, I'm Mabel," she replied, her voice a lot more soothing than normal. "Someone named Higgins was mean to you?"
"...Higgins is mean?" Bennings laughed, a bitter, hollow sound. "Oh he's a bit more than mean."
"Yeah, yeah. Bullies. They can be real jerks at times, with no good reason." Mabel approached Bennings carefully, nonthreatening. "But every bully has to stop for a while, if only so they can sleep. That gives you a great chance to forget what they did."
"Forget what he did?" Bennings laughed again, even more bitter. "He bullies me because he won't forget, or forgive. Thinks death'd be a bit too easy, after what I did to the lady."
Mabel paled a bit, but kept approaching. "Well, if you're that scared, what he did wasn't right. That's not paying someone back, that's being cruel-"
A very nasty smile came to the male nurse's face. "How much mercy does 'burn someone so bad you can't tell what they look like anymore' deserve?" he asked, a taunting tone in his voice.
Every member of the Shack suddenly fell into a fighting stance, Stan breaking out of Bennings' cling as he did so.
For a moment, nobody moved.
"I DIDN'T MEAN TO!"
That's when Bennings started to cry.
And not just cry, but wail.
He actually curled up on the floor as he did so, hiding his face in his patient gown.
"I...I didn...I didn't…" he choked out between sobs. "I jus...I wanted her to st...stop. She was...she was hurting me…I just..."
"Oh, save it for someone who cares, John." The redhead strode forward-
And shrieked as she was pushed back by Mabel. "Hey! Let him cry."
Bennings' sobs continued. "She...she knew. How much-how much I hate burns. Told her-told her how they held me down...put out their cigars on me…" A sharp inhale. "She...she did it too. Wanted to know how...how burns worked on flesh-flesh, not stone-flesh. But I listened-she was good to me, between burns, if I was good. Put nice thoughts in my head, pulled out the voices,,,"
Dipper lowered his guard slightly. "Um, what did you-"
"But she could be really mean too," Bennings continued, unknowing of Dipper. "She, she could make them louder, make the thoughts worse...danger, danger, always danger. Only felt safe with her, the beautiful lady." He inhaled again. "Didn't get that the burns hurt. So I put kerosene on me, before a burn, so it would catch. Really hurt me, so she didn't have to burn me any more...but it spread…"
Bennings trailed off into more weeping. "I'm sorry...I'm sorry…"
"...Hey," Mabel interrupted. "It's okay."
The mean nurse laughed, a far more cold sound than Bennings. "Seriously? Lady, have you been in a-"
Stan suddenly wheeled around to face Benning's orderlies. "Shut yer yap," he growled.
The nurse's eyes widened as he took a step back.
Mabel put a hand on Bennings' shoulder. "I don't know what you did...but you're sorry, aren't you?" She sat down, patting the weeping man's back. "And it's not like you wanted to hurt her. You just wanted to show her how hurt you were, for something she did. It's not like you deserved to be hurt, is it?"
"Higgins won't believe that," Bennings replied into his legs.
"Have you ever told him what she did?"
Slowly, Bennings stopped shaking. "...No."
"Then, next time you see him, maybe you can tell him. If he still doesn't believe you're sorry enough to be forgiven…" Mabel shrugged. "Well, that's his stubborn old fault, isn't it. And you'll know he's just mean for the sake of being mean."
Languidly, deliberately, Bennings began to unfurl. "T...thanks. But...but I don't wanna face him right now. And I don't want the tranqs. They make me dream."
The redheaded nurse groaned. "Fine. I'll authorize a temporary transfer, you'll-"
"What was that about tranqs?" came an almost melodious female voice from directly behind the nurses.
The syringe presumably full of said tranqs clattered to the ground. All three of the nurses slowly turned around, the muscular and silent one shifting to reveal the speaker.
A tall, olive-skinned woman wearing a white gown with a white nurse's cap smiled in the least friendly manner possible without breaking into a grimace.
"D-d-d-Dee!" stuttered out the mean nurse. "I-I didn't know you were taking an early-"
"I wasn't," Dee replied, her teeth barely moving even as her mouth did. "I heard Mr. Bennings screaming, and, unlike some people I could mention," she said as her greyish eyes flashed over to the redhead, "I am always ready to assist a patient out of a relapse. But that's not why I'm here today."
With that, Dee strode over to the syringe, picking it up in a single, fluid motion. "Mind explaining what's inside this?"
"Er...Um...Antipsychotics?" the male nurse replied, desperately.
"Then why, oh why, was Mr. Bennings telling this young lady about tranquilizers just then, hm? Tranquilizers, it should be mentioned, being the kind of thing you inject into struggling patients?"
The redhead gave a nervous giggle. "Well...er, you know how Bennings gets during an episode. After the latest Higgins encounter, he got himself worked up, and actively started clawing at the door, so we-"
"Okay, that? Was actively offensive to me as a liar." Stan said, frowning. "We didn't see the whole thing, but he was on the other side long before ya pulled that plunger out."
Both of the speaking nurses paled, as Dee's not-a-smile twitched.
"Mr. Bennings...could you please go to the comfort room? After what these...fine people just did, I think you deserve it. Also, I don't think you like me screaming."
Bennings nodded, before backing off down a corridor.
As soon as he was out of sight, the white-gowned nurse lunged. It took Mabel a second to realize she didn't actually attack the nurses, merely snarl in a way that reminded her unpleasantly of an enraged dog. "The hell were you two doing!?"
The redhead gulped. "I was scared! He was waving around that paint of his like it was a club or something-"
"You mean the paint palette? The cardboard, safety one? Oh, I can see why that would be really scary. You might smudge your makeup!"
"Er, well, yeah, but he was-"
"Protip, Sam," Dee cut in. "The next time you fall asleep on the job, read the diagnosis to help you doze off? Helping Mr. Bennings realize that accidentally stepping on someone's foot isn't an act worthy of suicidal ideation is actually what we're trying to help him with-or we would be, if I didn't have the only brain not shoved three feet up my own rear end. Or, in the case of Ed here," she said, turning to face the mean nurse, "deciding that ever since the court declared that I am not allowed within 500 feet of a puppy, I get my fun kicking the patients instead."
"C-Come on Dee!" Ed, sweating profusely. "I mean, I know we've had our disagreements over the years, but Bennings-I mean, he doesn't lash out now, but-"
"Save it, numbnuts," Dee cut in, dismissively waving him off. "Just admit to yourself you're an evil little prick and stop looking like a self-righteous, stupid little prick. As for you, Jenn…"
Dee's rant trailed off as she turned to the large nurse, who had remained utterly silent. "...you know what, I don't care. Just...get out. Clean the bedpans. I'll think of exactly what part of you three I haven't maimed yet later. Go."
The three scurried off-or rather, two-and-a-half, as Jenn's pace was rather slow.
Dee inhaled, sighed, and closed her eyes, rubbing her temple. After a few repeats of that, she turned to face the Mystery Shack, a slightly less fake smile coming to her face.
"Hi! You must be visitors. Sorry you had to see that, my staff is composed of morons, wannabe supervillains, or the latter being a function of the former. I'm Head Nurse Diwa Sykes, please call me Dee. I'll be right with you...after I smoke. If you want to join me outside, be my guest."
-----------------------
The first thing people tended to notice about Bishopgate's grounds behind the East Wing (beside being rather cool for summer) was the fountain in the middle of the stone plaza. Namely, the sheer amount of abuse it had apparently weathered. Whatever elegant design the marble once was, it had long since become a cracked, asymmetric mess of barely-standing debris, yet one that somehow still had water flowing through it in a somewhat constant stream.
Next to the obvious symbolism, a somewhat less sad-looking stone bench sat, where Nurse Dee had proceeded to park herself, cigarette in mouth, attempting to strike up a wooden match.
Dipper cleared his throat. "You know, that isn't exactly a healthy-"
"I know, kid." The match went up, quickly followed by the white cylinder. "But I'll be honest here: As self-destructive habits go, it's better in the short term than alcohol. Which is why I advocate getting a job you don't loathe-the less stress, the less cancer sticks, hooch, or drugs you feel the need to torture your body with to forget your life." She sighed, blowing out a puff of smoke that curled into mildly interesting shapes.
"...Then why don't ya just quit?" Stan replied, scratching his head.
"You saw that argument, right?" Dee grimaced. "I'm pretty much the only restraining bolt on the staff that won't quit and won't be fired."
Stan tilted his head. "'Won't be fired'? Who's the bright spark-"
"Don't ask."
For the next minute or so, everyone just sat on benches as Dee rolled her cig around her mouth. Eventually, she took it out to speak again.
"Anyway, I forgot to thank you with Bennings back there-he gets the short end of an already stubby stick a lot. So, thanks."
Dee attempted to smile at that. Attempted, because the overall effect with a lit cigarette in her mouth came off as less 'thankful' and more 'relieved that somebody with a soul still existed in her immediate vicinity.'
"...Good
"...Er," Wendy began, tapping her fingers together. "Is it kinda rude to ask what, um, he's in for? He seemed...jumpy?"
"Paranoid schizophrenic," Dee replied, taking a draw of her cigarette. "He was always one, but it got aggravated from borderline manageable to, well, him now, when he met the mysterious Jane Doe he keeps calling the 'beautiful lady'. Instant institutionalization, just add abuse." She exhaled before laughing bitterly. "Actually a big murder case couple years back, mostly because it was yellow journalism fodder. Pretty young white girl, burned alive? Network news eats that cr...crud right up. Excuse my language and cynicism."
She sighed. "Of course, his friends actually convinced him to plead not guilty, but eventually recanted their alibis once they saw him breaking apart. Probably the worst thing they could have done; now he thinks he's utterly irredeemable. Hence, Higgins; his own personal torturer, existing purely to hurt him back for killing his 'daughter.'" Her expression turned dark. "Of course, those three," she added, growling out the emphasis, "think what he really needed was some real-life torturers, because it's not like we have insanity pleas for reasons or anything like that."
She muttered something unintelligible as she tapped the cigarette in an ashtray.
"...Well, it can't be all bad," Soos replied, trying to smile. "He's got someone who cares about him, even if they don't."
She smirked. "Thanks. But really, I'm a nurse. It's my job to give a...mouse's butt whether a patient lives or dies." Her face fell. "Only one who actually does the job at all, it feels like."
She took another draft, apparently deep in thought. "Whoever you're seeing-I pity them. I really do."
"Actually," Stan said, shrugging. "Wendy here is doing a summer school report on how mental health evolved through the years, and since this is the closest mental hospital…"
Dee rose an eyebrow. "Seriously? Why you'd bring your grandkids then?"
"Grand niece and nephew. They're actually my editors," Wendy began. "They're tweens, sure, but they've got a gift for fact checking. Skipped a couple grades, both of them."
The eyebrow rose a little further, as Dee looked over at Mabel, who was currently imitating a rather wall-eyed face on the fountain before giggling. "O...kay."
She shook her head. "Here's a citation they can put in: Bishopgate is a barely functioning, corrupt, and mold-eaten pile of junk barely held together by a combination of inertia and trustees beating their heads against it, and has been since its foundation. About any other asylum is probably better than Bishopgate. An attic is probably better than Bishopgate-at least whoever is chained up there is next to family." She laughed, even more caustically.
An awkward silence followed that.
"...Bad week?", asked Wendy sympathetically.
"Especially," Dee rejointed, leaning back. "I hear they can't fund the counseling program anymore, so that's one less rope holding my patients from offing-maybe I shouldn't say that in front of your...er, grand niblings," she hurriedly finished.
"Huh. Didn't know that was a word. And..?"
"We're cool. Can't exactly be any more morbid than what we just saw."
Mabel thought on that. "...Well, maybe not cool cool, but listening to someone finally being able to complain can't damage our faith in humanity more than those jerks did."
"Hey, look on the bright side! You don't have to work with them."
Another grievance, another draft of smoke. "If it comes off like I'm venting-I am. I know I'm an utter stranger and all, but...I can't pay for a therapist. If I can get someone to break free of this tar pit of a hospital and get a lot off my chest at the same time…" She shrugged. "Honestly, this place? Is a zombie. Living despite ceasing all vital functions, mindlessly lurching across medical schools, finding bright young minds to devour and leaving them the walking dead." She motioned to herself. "Present company very much included."
Another puff. Idly, Soos began to wonder if they made cigarettes that lasted that long on purpose. Didn't seem smart for a tobacco company.
"...Actually," Mabel began, feeling very awkward, "We heard about some...other things after we started the off-site internet investigation."
Dee's eyebrow rose again. "Would this happen to involve Barbie Shrink?"
"No, but-" Mabel stopped. "Wait, what?"
"Ah. sorry. Director McClusky." Dee shrugged. "Probably rude to talk about her like that, but screw it, she deserves it."
Mabel's eyes narrowed. "...Excuse me, what did you just say?"
"That she's an idiot?" Dee gave another one of her bitter laughs. "She's every vapid blonde stereotype in the world if you aged them up and removed all sense of joy or curiosity? Miss, life lesson; there are some people in this world who are good, some who are evil, most in between, but there's at least a few who morality-free because they're genuinely useless. McClusky is in that last category."
Mabel narrowed her eyes a little more.
"...Moving on," Dee said an obviously uncomfortable tone. "What did you hear?"
"That there were lots of weird things going on at Bishopgate," Soos replied. "Like, er, very angry small dudes causin' trouble for the patients and-"
There was suddenly a large fwoosh sound as Dee inhaled a bit more smoke than she probably wanted.
After a brief coughing fit, Dee cleared her throat, putting out her cigarette. "Oh, uh, that? Yeah, don't know when that started. Think it was a schizophrenic delusion that got a life of its own. Happens, you know?"
Before the Shack could continue questioning, Dee sprang to her feet. "Anyway, smoke break's over." With that, the nurse retrieved a phone from a back pocket. "Want me to lead you to the library?"
"Nah, we're cool. Thanks."
"Okay then. Please enjoy your visit. I have rounds." With that, Bishopgate's long-suffering head nurse wheeled off.
"...I get the sense she's a person who needs more hugs," Mabel said, watching her pace grow increasingly swift.
"I get the sense she's hidin' something." Stan stroked his beard stubble. "She's not very good at cover-ups. Probably not good for her lungs either."
Dipper nodded. "Ten bucks she's going to be an obstacle in our investigation."
"Fifteen she's key witness." Mabel replied.
"...Knew we should have gone with 'great aunt'." Soos muttered.
-----------------------
The rest of the initial investigations didn't go much better.
"Well, apparently a Lara Woronov thinks she's a nurse." Wendy sipped as the Bishopgate cafeteria soda, which was quite possibly the flattest thing she had ever tasted. "Which I was only told aftershe led us in a grand circle through the second floor."
"Stan and I didn't have much better luck," Dipper said as he inspected a sad-looking sandwich. "We found something weird, but it was in the gift shop."
Said thing was a rather creepy-looking picture book, with the design of a tall, ominous mountain with an equally ominous castle on it, entitled Deildegast in ominous letters. Ominously.
"Not that great of a story, but I got new Halloween exhibits from it." Stan shrugged.
Wendy narrowed her eyes at the book. "Who in their right mind-?"
A passing man in a patient gown cleared his throat.
"Right, bad figure of speech. Sorry, dude."
The patient grumbled and walked off, muttering something that included 'school' and 'just like'.
Wendy coughed. "Let's try that again. Who...can be such a jerk they'd get something like that for a kid?"
"The kind of people who go on tours in the shady insane asylums with creepy pasts?" Mabel guessed.
"...I'd amend that to 'anyone who goes on a hospital tour to begin with,' but that's me." Wendy sighed. "So, to recap; we have no leads, the only sa-competent nurse is in on the cover-up, we can only investigate because the front desk hates his boss, which means any continued investigations are hanging by a thread that will be torn if someone less bored gets a shift when we're getting the day's visitor badges." She sighed, slumping on the table. "Anything I missed?"
"The one weird thing we did get doesn't even rhyme?" Stan opened the book, revealing a comic spread of a the mountain and a cloaked figure that lay beneath it. "Seriously, the closest thing this thing comes is rhymin' 'ghosts' with itself. 'Here is a mountain, a mountain'-"
"Boss, please. Not in here." Wendy groaned, holding her head.
"Really, dudes, the main problem is we didn't come in here with a good plan." Soos shrugged. "Everything we thought of was a way to actually get in. Now that we are in...we had no idea where to start lookin'."
"And the cover-up being tripped." Stan replied. "Probably need to be hushed on why we're actually here from now on; I don't think our real reason's gone up the chain, but I'm bettin' Dee hassomeone she doesn't get sick talking to."
"...Can we do that tomorrow?" Mabel said pointing at her brother. "I think today's taken a lot out of Dipper."
For indeed, Dipper's reply to this was his snoring being suddenly cut off. "Huh-? I-auuugh."
A brief dash to the bathroom to wipe possibly-expired sandwich mayonnaise off his face later, Dipper came back, suddenly looking exhausted.
"...You been gettin' enough sleep?" Soos asked. "I don't think that soda has that much caffeine…"
"It...it doesn't have caffeine, Soos." Dipper rubbed his eyes. "I don't know. I was fine when we sat down, but now? Feels like someone snuck up behind me and hit me with a brick."
"I know the feelin'" Stan replied in sympathy. "Used to stay up late all the time, readin' comics. Never worked out later in the school day."
"I know, it's just...oooh, head's throbbing, head's throbbing." Dipper began to massage his temple, groaning.
"Well, that's probably our cue to get done with for the night," Wendy said, a bit more eager than she had probably intended. "Sleeping arrangements, boss?"
"Well, I didn't take the RV, so I think it's motel-town for the week," Stan said as he pulled out a brochure. "Thankfully, I know a place with a good-ish health record. Also; bunk beds."
"Top bed!"
-----------------------
Here is a mountain, a mountain of ghosts.
Dipper blinked at the sign, frowning. "Thanks for the directions, Captain No-Help." A little more cinching of his coat later, and trudged on through the snowdrift, towards the softly glowing mountain.
And here on the mountain, there is a castle.
Dipper rolled his eyes and pushed through the big oak doors of said castle, ignoring the wind. Or was that the moans? Whatever, it's not like the spacious foyer, filled with what had to be a dozen clocks, was any less eerie.
And beneath the castle there is a king.
A sarcophagus, decorated with what appeared to be a crucifix-topped altar torn in two, with a coffin with a star topping it on either side engraved on its lid, waited in the center of the cavern. Nodding an affirmative to the others, Dipper reached for a crowbar.
The king who built the castle on the-
"What do you want?"
And just like that, the spell was broken, and Dipper realized exactly what the "others" were in this case.
He wasn't sure how he managed to negotiate the stairs in his blind panic, nor cared.
A few minutes later, in the middle of a now rather damaged garden of blue roses, Dipper shivered. Of course, he had to take off his coat when helping those...things. It was only the middle of...summer…?
Confused, the boy checked his surroundings. The flower bushes looked perfectly green, so what the heck was up with the snow-
Relief surfed through Dipper as the memories of being in the car came rushing back. He had fallen asleep, hadn't he? Well, that was a relief. The whole Teihiihan business must've been getting to him, or maybe a bit of mayo went down when his face made friends with that sandwich.
Right then, nicer dream. First of all, let's get that snow to become...grass…
Didn't seem to be listening.
Okay...time for a hard reset then. Dipper closed his eyes, thought about waking up, and…
Oh. Dream didn't stop at all.
Cruuuuud.
Okay, apparently there was some sort of dream parasite he picked up. Dipper began to scour his memory for info in the journals about creatures that kept you trapped in sleep. Succubi? No, a younger version of Wendy would be present if one of them was out and about, and the dream would be more pleasant besides. Sandman? The gothic castle and theme of unearthing a dead king fit, but as far as Dipper knew, he wasn't grieving for someone at all, let alone obsessively enough for a ghost to smell and insert itself into his brain. Night hag? No, they sent you into sleep paralysis at some point, and besides, didn't they usually show up in animal form-
"You didn't hear me."
Slowly, Dipper spun around to face the source of that deep, growly voice.
The dog that had to be the size of Stan's car breathed in his face, a bit of shadow escaping its mouth like breath fogging the air.
"...Yipe."
"I ask again. What do you want?"
A few breaths, and Dipper calmed down. "Okay. Okay. I know you're hungry, but I haven't had much sleep lately, so can we make a deal? You let me have eight hours now, and you can hag me the two nights after-"
"What. Do you. Want. From Bishopgate. Thornslave."
Dipper nearly discovered what happened when you fainted in a dream right then in there, the near-roar of the shadow-dog's voice ringing in his ears. "If this is your home-kind of a jerk move to attack mental patients, even if you're starving-we're trying to save it from monsters who might eat-"
"You little-"
Dipper could say no more before the dog knocking him to the ground, paw cutting off his air supply.
"Don't you dare try that again. Lie to me all you want, but if you..blaspheme by telling me you're here to help again, I will sell you to my Keeper. Tell me, thornslave; how much you wanna bet your master cares enough about you to buy you back from him?"
"M-Master? K-Keeper?" Dipper choked out. "I...I don't know what you're talking…"
Slowly, the dream turned darker, and darker, as the young investigator's dream-lungs began to lose air. All he could feel was an interesting sensation-like the dog was sniffing the inside of his skull.
A sensation that suddenly stopped.
"You…You're really a child?"
Dipper became aware of the pressure on his throat lift. A quick gasp of air later, and the blur cleared.
There was no shadow-hound. But there was its voice.
"So. Not a servant of the others. But maybe a hunter? The Spear and Shield, claiming yet more of our magic is theirs? Bear Lodge having a bring-your-kids-to-hunt day? Or just some reckless and selfish idiot who told you the real world is just like a Goosebumps novel?
"Never mind. It's But tell whatever sociopathic dumbass who thinks that sending kids in first is a good plan that he needs protection against dream-poison. As tempting as it is to just let him drown in it, I'm not going to let a kid suffer for his mistakes."
The sniffing started again, followed quickly by...not biting, but definitely the sense that it had its mouth on parts. A quick yanking feeling and-
The clocks surrounding the garden shattered, and Dipper suddenly felt very awake. More awake than he had been for a week. Even asleep.
"But tell him this; Investigate all you like. May be something I haven't found. But the instant you step on the toes of my freehold, make a list of everything you can lose. You're going to mark each and every item off, one by one. Except, of course, your life. It's a waste of good sorrow."
-----------------------
"What the heck does a spear-"
And now Dipper was awake. Shoot.
Given the relative darkness, he guessed it was night by now. Given the material above him, Dipper supposed he was in the bunk bed now.
"...Hello? Is anyone still awake? ...No?"
Yawning, Dipper slipped out. Noise would probably wake up the others, so all he needed to do was just walk over to the bathroom, brush his teeth and maybe put on some deodorant. Showers would probably wake up the other lodgers in the room, as he doubted Stan would spring for multiple rooms.
So, as quietly as he could, he made his way over to the bathroom. Slowly, deliberately, he opened the door-
-----------------------
"WAAAAH!"
Thankfully for everyone still in the car, Stan had parked before Dipper catapulted out of sleep.
"WHOA, WHAT, WHEN-Oh hi Dipper. Show up without pants to the math test again?"
"Soos!" Relief flooded through Dipper. "You're alive!"
Immediately, the handyman's bemusement evaporated. "Knew that mayo had gone bad."
"Oh man, Soos, it was awful! The dream, not the mayo, but-there was this bathroom, see, and as soon as I opened, there was this black thing with these huge, egg-white eyes, and then-oof."
Soos used the sudden hug to pat Dipper on the back. "Hey. Whatever it was, it didn't happen out here in the real world."
"...Thanks," Dipper said, returning the pat.
Then the rest of the dream came flooding back.
"...But I definitely think someone is out here in the real world. And they are angry."
-----------------------
A/N: I have nothing to say here, except I am slooow. Sorry.
The Gentry are hollow creatures of the Wyrd, of Fate and Madness, who desire to consume the emotional energies of their mortal prey. They can manipulate the minds and dreams of others, but unlike Bill they're not beings of mind and dream.
Bill and the other Mind Demons seem to me like entities of the Astral Realm, DEEP within the darkest part of the Anima Mundi, who desire to take physical forms in order to unleash their alien whims upon the mortal realm!
Also Bill doesn't see mankind as a food source AND toys like the Gentry do. He just sees them as playthings.
Why else would he just freeze his victims in stone, and use them for a throne?
Bill and the other Mind Demons seem to me like entities of the Astral Realm, DEEP within the darkest part of the Anima Mundi, who desire to take physical forms in order to unleash their alien whims upon the mortal realm!
Also Bill doesn't see mankind as a food source AND toys like the Gentry do. He just sees them as playthings.
Why else would he just freeze his victims in stone, and use them for a throne?
Probably. That's why I invoked acamoth. But his personality and actions are hard to distinguish "I'm having fun with my food!" from "I'm having fun with my toys!". Said throne-of-people, precisely calibrated so they can occasionally struggle out, is exactly the kind of conflict Gentry who don't wish to risk a Title (for those of you uninitiated, that's basically an avatar/role in a story of the main True Fae, which they regularly battle each other over to help keep defined and thus, avoid dissolution back into Arcadia) would seek.