#journal d

I’M BACK, BABY!

Sorry, needed to get that out my system. An update: after my encounter with the Chronomerchant by Lake Michigan, I think someone in the Magic Market took exception to me taking records of their business dealings. I was called into some abandoned house on the outskirts of Detroit, ostensibly for a routine ghost-busting, when I was jumped by a gang of vampires. Hired muscle, neon tracksuits and fake tan - the usual stuff.

Some guy in a suit came in, and cast a spell on me that transformed me into a 12-year-old! Then they took my journal and drove off, leaving me stranded in this crumbling suburb. Let me tell you, there’s nothing so humbling as remembering how weak you were when you were a kid. This was pre-Gravity Falls Mason Pines - I could barely climb out the window or run down the street without feeling like my lungs wanted to shrivel up and die, and don’t even get me started on those stupid noodle arms. And people wonder why I started going to the gym.

What’s more, my clothes didn’t change size with me, so I had to wander around tripping up on my own pant legs. I’m sure if Mabel saw this, she’d have squealed in delight at how adorable I was. I suppose that worked to my benefit - pretty soon the cops came to pick me up. I wasn’t worried about this (nope, not worried, definitely not shivering and sweating with pure anxiety, nope nope). I had an ace up my six-sizes-too-big sleeve.

Back when I was 12 for real, my sister and I had a run-in with this witch - she tricked my Grunkle Stan into stealing a cursed watch so she’d claim his hands, all so she could lure him to her cave so she could ask him on a date. She’d done this dozens of times, going from the number of disembodied hands she had. Apparently everyone before Stan would have preferred leaving them behind. We felt kinda sorry for her, so my sister set her up with a new pad and a dating profile.

Turned out her name was Pru Handforth, and she was the oldest member of Gravity Falls’ witch coven. Apparently, back in the 1860s her legs had to be amputated after an accident, and she magically replaced them with a pair of arms. The other two witches in the coven were Eartha Oceana the magic hippie (witches rarely choose ‘normal’ names once they adopt the life of a spellweaver), and Crow Pi, who I remembered used to work at Edgy On Purpose. ...They probably still do. Also proof that you don’t have to be female to be a witch.

Anyway, Pru had put in a good word with the other two; during my summers in Gravity Falls my sister and I ran a few errands for them, like hunting down Eye of Eyebat or taking voice recordings of a Sfinx (yes, with an ‘f’, she was aquatic), so I knew I had a couple favours I could cash in with them. They looked into their connections on Hextsy.net - apparently a friend of theirs called Barley had been scouting around Michigan for artifacts, and there was a dispute between Hextsy and some warlock bigwig over some book he’d tracked down - they were demanding proof it was a magical artefact and not a work of fiction, while he was claiming that it held confidential information and was threatening on taking it to FaeBay.com instead. So not only was this asshole stock market guy trying to sell my journal, he was also trying to pass it off as his own work!

I wish I could say there was a suitably dramatic ending to all this where I bust down the warlock’s front door and froze him with liquid nitrogen or stabbed him right in the phylactery or whatever, but no such luck. Instead Barley just offered to buy the book from him, no questions asked, which he did, and then gave it back to me. Oh yeah, and he reversed that spell on me. So yeah, anyone reading this, keep all this in mind next time you see a witch selling cursed watches, they might just save your life one day.

Oh yeah, and we’re pretty sure that warlock just didn’t want it getting out that he’d sacrificed his former secretary to a demon for his powers. We can’t prove that, but we can prove he tried to rip off Hextsy, so I’ll just wait for the Hidden Court to come down on him.

Welp, here we are - the big 22! I say that (well, write that) like it’s some milestone, but. Not really. Just another year for the collection. I guess it’s the same digit twice, so that’s something. Already, I can’t wait for my 33rd. Moses, I’m old.

Just ten years ago, I was a kid. It’s easy to say in hindsight that I had always known what my path in life would be, but... it’s weird. To think, back then, I had no idea what was awaiting me in Gravity Falls. That I’d find the perfect town for me, a precocious little brat skulking around the school halls, writing notes and hiding my birthmark. That’s why they call me Dipper, actually. I’m well aware it was an insult, but my mom told me to take pride in it, that way they can’t use it against me. Worked like a charm.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m a good son. It’s my birthday and I’m out here, in West Virginia of all places, tracking the Flatwoods Monster. As a kid, it’d be a dream come true, but... I dunno. I guess it’s what happened in Minneapolis, it made me think of stuff like this. My mom was a P.I., she was into mystery novels like Viscount Discount; she always used to tell me all the Weird stuff I was into wasn’t real, that it was a load of pseudoscience peddled to sell crappy ideas and crappier products, and I ought to question it. I thought she wanted me to ‘grow up’, that she never believed anything I said, and... sometimes I got a bit angry at her.

I hadn’t realized how right she was - not about the pseudoscience part, but the questioning. To turn a pseudoscience into a true science, it must be questioned, and it must survive the questions - and more questions, and more questions, until the questions build the foundations, becoming a part of what they once sought to destroy. Or something. It’s what set me apart from those deluded assholes on the conspiracy boards.

I haven’t seen my mom in months. Haven’t seen dad for longer, not since they separated. I dunno if I was a good son for him, either. I always thought he treated my interests as a big joke; it was hard to believe he used to be a UFO nut. I can see where Mabel got it from.

Mabel. There’s another person I haven’t seen for a long time. It’s her birthday today, as well. Twins. We’d shared every birthday before she left to live in Japan three years ago. Or was it four? Yet, even after all those years, I don’t think I ever understood her. Still kinda don’t. I don’t think she ever understood me, either. Or... maybe that’s just me projecting, she was always better with people than me. Kinda envied her for that. She could make friends with anyone in the time it took me to get out of bed for school, but she always seemed to have room for more. And after Gravity Falls she was always sticking by my side, like she needed my support after seeing what we’d seen. As if; she’s probably doing just fine on her own. Last I heard she’d become a sumo wrestler? That was kind of an unexpected twist.

Am I a good son? A good bro-bro? Am I acting like I’m still 12, venting in my diary? Maybe. I guess that’s the crux of the issue right there. My kid self is still with me, taking what my adult self knows and is asking why I’m not with my family. I feel so stupid for even writing this, family isn’t the be-all and end-all of life. Never really had plans to start my own family. ...Isn’t that weird? How the moment you have kids, suddenly ‘your family’ is you and them, not you and your parents and your siblings? Maybe that’s when the ‘bond’ finally breaks, and I don’t think I’m ready for that. I kinda wanna share this with them, someday. I wanna come back home and invite everyone back to Gravity Falls, and me and Mabel can have a presentation-off. (I think I’ve got that in the bag, unless she’s run into some Oni). And I could give Grunkle Stan an idea or two for some new exhibits. I just hope he gets better.

This weekend, I’ve been hired to shadow a family hiking vacation a few miles from Helena. I needed to buy a new camping chair after the last one was torn to pieces in that incident with the Owlbear, so I went looking around and just then, on the horizon, it appeared, a great brick of blue and gold - the TRIKEA. You know the sort, big-box Swedish furniture store that looks more like a warehouse, but it’s justified because it... needs more space to fit all the stuff in. I write like it wasn’t obvious. Mason, you idiot.

Immediately, as I drove up to park, something’s not right. The delineation separating the building and the surrounding woods was too sharp. The parking lot itself was empty, not even delivery trucks. The store itself was  devoid of people; I suppose I did arrive just before closing time, but it took me ten minutes to even find an employee. The one I did find claimed this was normal. She had a thin strand of unusual material lining the interior of her uniform cap. A ‘cold iron foil’, with an additional lining of unicorn hair, which I was not permitted to see. Protects their minds from ‘Bill’. Obviously there’s something magic going on. The employees I encountered were normal humans, just accustomed to Weird phenomena. I showed them a few of my Journal entries and they smiled and nodded. Apparently the mistake I made with the Owlbear was presuming they like liquid honey, not solid honeycomb.

I was told that speaking to the manager was completely out of the question - they haven’t even left their office in years - so they let me look around the employee lounge instead. They had signs up advising employees to keep up their mental defences, and be on the lookout for yellow eyes - ‘if you see anyone with yellow eyes, restrain them immediately with your emergency handcuffs and secure them to any bed in the bedding area - whatever you do, never shake their hand’. ‘Bill’ was at the top of the banned list. Someone had brought in some Cookie Cats, which expired in 1966 (a year before they were discontinued, and the packaging was consistent with the time period, not the revival from the 2000s) and yet looked perfectly edible. Most of the food in the fridge was Brown Meat™. On the way out I passed through the art section - it was full of pictures of Gravity Falls, and of comets, and of road signs saying ‘WRONG WAY’.

That wasn’t even the weirdest part. I was served at the checkouts by an employee called Jesús - I knew him. He’s an old friend of mine, works for my Great-Uncle at his tourist trap. He was much younger than I remember, still in the depths of the acne ages. I made the mistake of referring to him by name, but cleared it up before he took me for a ‘stalker kidnapper dude’. According to him, the date was July 13th 2006, so I wished him a happy birthday I refrained from doing so I may have blurted out  and then I remembered; years ago, he told me of an odd encounter while ‘working a side job at TRIKEA’, with a guy who looked just like me - ON HIS BIRTHDAY. The mystery was solved - THE STORE CAN TRAVEL THROUGH TIME!

Why didn’t my mom take me here when I was a kid?

Of course, I couldn’t risk my friend figuring out my true identity, thus screwing up the timeline (I’m on bad enough terms with Time Baby’s goons as it is) so I made my excuses and left. But not before eating the objectively best Swedish meatballs I’ve ever had. It’s TRIKEA, you have to try it. Heh, try. Try-kea. Guess I could have gone into marketing.

Another day, another exorcism. Since departing California, it’s occurred to me that the layperson may not understand the distinction between a ghost haunting and a demon haunting. The Author went into great detail behind the various Categories of ghost that may spook up the place, but not so much into demons. For convenience, I shall go over them in the ever-reliable bulletpoint format.

GHOSTS:

Are the spirits of deceased humans (and other beings), tethered to a physical location. Reasons for this vary, but typically some form of unfinished business.

Come in various categories, each more powerful than the last. As more time passes and the ghost’s connection to its former humanity (or other being-ity) fades, its tether to the living world grows stronger, enabling it to further influence its surroundings.

Must usually be removed via exorcism, or ‘busting’. This is sad, but ironically the conditions by which a haunting can even be noticed usually mean it’s too high a category to pass on peacefully. Some ghosts can pass on peacefully, however, if its unfinished business is resolved (e.g. the ghost of Northwest Manor, my first ever busting! I wonder how Pacifica’s doing)

Are typically found in areas of great pain and turmoil, such as Los Angeles.

DEMONS:

Are entities residing in other dimensions, but may interact with ours via the Mindscape. However, it is limited to invisible observation unless some idiot summons it.

Like to make deals with mortals. This is the chief way by which they can gain further power in our world, up to and including possession. Asking for your firstborn son in exchange for the Super Bowl results is a favourite.

Unlike ghosts, demons are bound to its summoner - the anchor - and the anchor’s descendants by parenthood. If you happen to be one of them, you’re kinda screwed. Otherwise, just get far away from the offending person and you’re golden.

Require fulfilment of a contract to banish. Best way to deal with a demon summoning - DON’T SUMMON IT. Just don’t. (Theoretically you could wipe it out with some sort of memory-eraser but you’d have to let it possess you and wipe your own mind in the process... seriously, it’s not worth it. If you’re that strapped for cash, just stop playing those stupid gacha games)

I've barely been on the job for a year now, and this name keeps coming up. Far too often to be a coincidence. And I'm not the only one who noticed. In Journal 3, the Author wrote 'Beware Bill'. Spoke of a three-sided demon bent on the destruction of reality itself, one that flatters you and takes up residence in your mind. The Author evidently fell prey to his tricks, proving that even the greatest minds are not immune. Yet I have never encountered him once, even though, whenever I speak with the Fae, or powerful spirits on the crossroads of our Dimension, they all say the same thing: Bill lies on the Threshold. Has been for... 40 years, give or take? I even spoke with an Oracle, an 'agent of the Axolotl', in the Louisiana Bayou last week. She told me I had the face of the man who should have destroyed Bill. 'Should have'... what could it mean?

None of these guys have told me why this omnicidal demon's called 'Bill', of all things. Kind of a dumb name, I'd have expected something like... I don't know, 'Kthzonkrlgn', or 'Altumilesion', or hell, even 'B'. Anything but 'Bill'. The hobo who helped me track the Minneapolis crab beast was called Bill. Well, Will. Bill, Will. How did 'Will' turn into 'Bill', anyway? My sister was right, English is a stupid language. Just like all the others.

This journal is dedicated to my sister. Without Mabel, none of this would be possible. Keep shining, sis!

My name is Mason Emile Pines, but my friends call me Dipper. I'm saying this now in case something bad happens and you find this book at the bottom of the ocean or buried beneath a landslide next to a skeleton. The skeleton is probably me, so make sure I end up in a museum!

Eight years ago, I spent a summer in the town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. It's not on any maps, and most people have never heard of it. Some say it's a myth. If you're curious about it, don't wait. Take a trip. It's out there, somewhere in the woods, waiting. As it was for me, and I didn't even know.

My whole life, I've been interested in the world of Weird. Some call it the supernatural, the paranormal, the liminal world, whatever. At home, other kids at school used to think I was a freak for my interests. My parents worried about my future prospects. Even my own sister called me crazy a couple times (seems dumb in hindsight, if I had told her unicorns were real she'd have committed human sacrifice to meet one. Don't do that, by the way; turns out unicorns are total jerks. Plus human sacrifice is generally a bad thing). In any other world, they probably would have been right. In this world, I found Journal 3.

That book opened my eyes to so, so much. A whole world of magic and mystery - no, worlds, plural. Right beneath our noses. Fairies, spirits, extraterrestrial life, the power to travel through time and between parallel realities... it's honestly beyond the scope of any one book. It would take several research papers to even scratch the surface of what I discovered. And what the Author discovered.

I spent years trying to find out the identity of Journal 3's Author. I scoured his writings from top to bottom, swept the town of Gravity Falls, learned every cryptographic system known to man, but it was never enough. In the end, I never did learn his identity. Now that I think about it, it was probably kinda presumptuous of me to call them a 'he' this whole time, maybe they were a woman or something else entirely! I'll never know for sure.

But enough about that; I can dwell on old unsolved mysteries in my own time. Which I suppose this is my own time, but you get what I mean. The Author, whose shoes I now step into, built the foundations for opening up the world of Weird to the mundane world, and my family and friends drew the blueprints - now I need to build the gates. If that made any sense. There's a whole world outside Gravity Falls, and I intend to search it, to find new phenomena, and document it here. To bravely go where no man (or woman, or other) has gone before. And yes, I am a nerd, if you couldn't tell from the Star Walkabout reference. The reboot was total crap, by the way.

I think that just about covers the introductions. Onwards, into the unknown, Ad Astra Per Aspera and all that. Dipper out!

In an earlier entry I talked about demons and their love of ripping off mortals with ‘deals’. Turns out the desire to rip you off for every cent (and more) is pretty common in the paranormal sphere; even in the world of Weird, you can’t escape the evils of bad business.

There’s enough Weird merchants out there that I’ve devoted an entire category of creature to them; many of them are demons, many are mortal or once-mortal entitites, but they all share one thing two things in common - powerful magic, and the inclination to trade in things you typically can’t trade in. Whenever you hear someone say ‘you can’t put a price on that’, these guys will say ‘LOL NOPE’ and put a price on it.

Some are mostly harmless loons, like the Vibe Trader (will trade your current vibes for another set of vibes out of their Vi-bag), and some could be pretty dangerous if you’re stupid around them, like Memorandom (trades memories - get rid of bad memories, sure, but end up with new ones in exchange from some other person. You can haggle for hours over the memory exchange rate - the memory of your mom’s face will usually fetch at least ten nice vacations, while that ice cream you had yesterday will barely net you a reminder to wash the dishes; I almost traded the memory of an old school bully for a memory of a kindergarten bully.)

Others are more actively dangerous, and will try to rip you off for a (sometimes literal) pound of flesh. Such as Mr. What’s-His-Face - want a more beautiful face? He’ll give you one that’s ‘completely blemish-free’ (BLANK). Want to look like a tough guy? He’ll make your face stone-hard (LITERALLY A CINDER BLOCK). And then add your old face to his collection because... I dunno, I guess personal image issues. His own face is sort of a swirling flesh-tornado.

The most interesting was probably the Chronomerchant. Her specialty is time - the time of your life. Your money for your life. Lifespan. You get the idea.

One of the country’s oldest senators (quite an accomplishment these days) was having some trouble with her - as usual, he’d made a deal with a Weird merchant and then stiffed her on payment. When will these dumbasses learn? Still, I don’t turn down a job, especially one like this - if I had known I’d get to meet such a powerful entity, I’d have done it for free.

I met her on a train while falling off a bridge. It was frozen in time, of course. She said she liked the view in that spot. She was pretty nice, actually; she greeted me and introduced herself (not telling me her name because ‘why, that would be too forward of me’) checked her books to see if I was on her list of outstanding debts, and then gave me a ten-minute recap of her deal with the senator that probably could have been summed up in five words: ‘f#%& him, he pay me’.

She offered to loan me some prime-quality lifespan, too, but I declined. Couldn’t afford to buy any, even though these days the price has gone down - in the old days people would sell her their children’s souls for an extra year, now with better healthcare there’s less demand for her services. She wasn’t too open about her past or how she got her powers - she looked like a bug person clock roach insectoid humanoid, and implied her own lifespan did not originally belong to her - a naturally short-lived species attaining immortality by stealing the lifespan of others, perhaps? Not sure if she holds her ‘stock’ inside her, or in the hourglass at the end of her staff.

DREAMBORN ENTITY