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ckret2 · 7 months

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Chapter 20 of Human Bill is the Mystery Shack's (secret) prisoner (title tbd), featuring: at last, Wendy discovering the "house guest." And Stan discovering Wendy discovered the house guest. And Bill and Stan having the funniest argument imaginable.

Also featuring: Ford letting Fiddleford in on the secret and asking for his help getting rid of Bill for good.

####

"Hey dudes," Soos said, leaning into the living room. Bill and Mabel looked up from Mabel's phone. "Me and Melody and Ford are heading out for anime night. If you've got an emergency, call me; and if you don't have an emergency, uh... don't. Cuz we're gonna be anime-ing hard."

"Anime night?" Bill repeated. "Why's Stanford going to anime night?"

Soos blinked. "Is... that a trick question?" he asked. "Hey—aren't you not allowed to use phones?"

"He's not using it," Mabel said. "I'm using it. He's just watching a video over my shoulder. I've got him secured for our safety!" Bill demonstratively held up his bloody sock-wrapped hands.

"Oh. Smart thinking," Soos said. He nodded and left.

Bill looked back at the phone, left eye shut and right eye squinted, then pointed at the screen and murmured, "Oh, there—037, 037 is a big winner." Mabel nodded and wrote down "Beach 037" on a piece of paper where she'd been listing scratch card serial numbers.

Soos came back. "Hey," he said, "Bill. Why are your hands bloody."

"Because my eye's bleeding." As he said so, a bright red drop of blood rolled out of his right eye like a tear. He wiped it off his cheek with one hand, adding another stain to the sock.

"Oh. Okay," Soos said. "Why's your eye bleeding."

Mabel helpfully answered, "Because it's hard for him to see into a higher dimension from here."

"Hey." Bill nudged her with an elbow. "That was for your ears. But yes, if you have to know. Human eyeballs are—limited. It causes some some light cranial hemorrhaging." He squinted at the video again. Another bloody tear rolled down his cheek.

Soos stood uncomfortably in the doorway. "Looks... kinda painful."

"Excruciatingly," Bill said casually. Mabel mouthed he's fine at Soos.

Soos said, "Do you... want a headache pill? Or an eyepatch or something?"

"Oh." Bill looked up at Soos in surprise. "Is that an option?"

Soos shrugged. "Yeah?"

"Huh." Bill was momentarily silent, processing this revelation about the medical care options he was permitted. Finally, he said, "No to the pill—I think I'm getting a migraine aura, and I don't want to stop the little white spots before they develop into full hallucinations! I'd hate to miss that light show, you know?"

Soos nodded, as though he did know. He did not, in fact, know.

"But I could use an eyepatch," Bill said.

"You got it. Be right back."

Soos retrieved an unopened costume eyepatch from the spares for his Mr. Mystery outfit, brought it downstairs, and handed it over to Bill's socked hand. "Do you uh—need help getting that on?"

"I'll do it when we're done with the phone," Bill said, and returned to watching the video.

Mabel poked his side. "What do we say?"

"Thanks," Bill said without looking up, followed by, "062." Mabel dutifully copied the number down.

Soos headed out to his pickup, where Melody and Ford were waiting. "Sorry for the delay, guys," he said, sliding into the driver's seat. "Bill's eyeball is bleeding from trying to look at a higher dimension, so I had to get him an eyepatch."

In the back seat, Ford frowned and pulled his journal from inside his coat and flipped open to the most recent page. "Which eye?"

"Uh..." Soos held up a hand and turned it as he mentally rotated Bill to figure out which side his bloody eye would be on if it were on Soos's body. "Right. His right."

"Did he happen to mention which dimension he was trying to see?"

"Nuh-uh. He probably won't say either, he was kinda annoyed Mabel told me that much."

Mabel might know, then. Ford could ask her. Probably tomorrow—late tomorrow, after the party.

Melody asked, "He's not gonna need a doctor, is he?"

Soos started the truck. "He seemed really casual about the whole thing, so, I don't think so?"

"That's a relief," Ford muttered.

They started the drive to the former Northwest Manor.

####

When Fiddleford answered the front door and saw Ford, he smiled so wide it made Ford smile too. "Stanford! It's been a month of Sundays since I saw you last!"

"Fiddleford." Ford reached out to take Fiddleford's hand—and got tugged into a one-armed hug. He recovered from his surprise enough to return it. "It's good to see you. You're looking well." Which was to say: still looking aged before his time and running around barefoot and shirtless in his overalls; but a little less sunburned, a little more bathed, and merely "scrawny" rather than "emaciated." Ford figured if the man wanted to run around shirtless in his own lavish 150-year-old mansion, that was his own business.

"Just like we promised," Melody said, "one Ford dragged to your doorstep."

"Yes!" Soos pumped a fist in the air. "Operation Ford-Ford Reunion: completed! We uh—we didn't actually drag him, though. He was excited to come."

"He oughta be," Fiddleford said. "This'll be just like old times! Back in college, this man showed me all sortsa Japanese movies about big monsters and robots clobberin' each other. It was my first taste of international cinema!" He scratched his beard. "I wonder if that had any kinda impact on me?"

Melody and Soos looked at Ford with new respect. Soos said, "I didn't realize you were such a man of culture."

"All right, enough jibber-jabberin' on my porch!" Fiddleford waved Soos and Melody in. "You youngins go on ahead. Us old timers have to catch up. Tate's in the kitchen rustlin' up some vittles."

"Sweet, movie snacks," Soos said. He turned to Melody. "Wanna take the hidden service tunnel the Northwests used to hide the less pretty servants?"

"Pffft! Is that even a question?"

Soos tapped a foot twice on a square of Venetian parquet flooring just left of the door. A section of floor beneath them dropped down to form a slide, and Soos and Melody plummeted into the dark, squealing and laughing. The floor swung back up.

Fiddleford said, "I sure hope I fixed that tunnel to go to the pantry 'stead of the secret dungeon. Anywho!" He ambled his bow-legged way into the manor, gesturing for Ford to follow him. "We'll take the scenic route."

Ford looked around as he followed Fiddleford. He'd never been allowed in the front way before—the last time he'd visited the Northwest Manor back in the eighties, he'd been told to come in through a side door. It had been a very long walk. The front door opened directly into a great hall large enough to serve as a ballroom, with a staircase at the far end that led up to a fireplace and then forked left and right. A whale statue hung from the ceiling and still seemed dwarfed by the vast room. Ford had taken classes in lecture halls smaller than this. "I'm surprised you're still answering your own door. With all you made selling your inventions, I'd have expected you to hire a butler by now."

"I built me one a few months back," Fiddleford said, "but it kept trying to murder the feller what brings my mail. So I locked it in the coat room until I can figure out what went wrong."

There was a violent thud and scraping against a door near the entrance.

"Don't worry about that. It's reinforced," Fiddleford said. "Now, how long have you been back in town—a couple weeks?"

"Nearly." Had it really been less than two weeks? Somehow that felt both too long and too short. He'd accomplished so little with two weeks at his disposal. "I'm sorry it's taken me so long to come by. I wanted to as soon as I was back in town. You must think me a terrible friend—"

"Nonsense," Fiddleford said firmly. "I knew you'd come when you could—and here you are, ain'tcha? I reckoned you must've been busy with something."

"Yes," Ford agreed, with a bitter laugh. "More busy than you can imagine."

"Well, there you go! Nothin' to beat yourself up over."

Ford slowed, dropping a few steps behind Fiddleford, feet heavy, feeling like a physical pressure was keeping him from walking forward; and then he stopped. "I'm sorry to say, but that's part of the reason I'm here." He stared at the gap between his boots and Fiddleford's feet, the beautiful hardwood floor and the thin layer of dirt that had settled on it. "Of course, I wanted to visit you too, but... I need your help, Fiddleford."

He'd meant to wait until after the show to bring this up, let Fiddleford enjoy his evening without anxiety—hadn't he learned with Mabel not to try to mix business and socialization?—but now that Ford was here, the bad news threatened to bubble out of him with every breath. He wouldn't be able to enjoy his evening with his dread of the coming conversation weighing down on him. (What right did he have to enjoy the evening, when he knew he was once again about to make his mistakes Fiddleford's problem?)

But, Ford hadn't had the self-control to keep it to himself for just another few hours—he must have been too tired—excuses, excuses—and now Fiddleford was giving him that look he got when he was fully focused on a conversation, eyes wide and surprised-looking, as if opening them further would let him absorb more of the information he was receiving. "Of course, Stanford. What sort of help?"

Of course, he said. Of course, like Ford didn't have a history of asking for help that ruined people's lives. Either Fiddleford was charitable enough to assume Ford wouldn't inflict the kind of monstrous horrors on him he had thirty years ago, or selfless enough to offer anyway.

Ford swallowed hard. "It's heavy," he warned. "I don't want to ruin the show. Would you rather wait until afterward to discuss it...?" Although Ford doubted Fiddleford would stand for that.

Sure enough, Fiddleford waved off the idea with his bandaged arm. "Don't be silly. Now that you've brought it up, it's gonna give me the heebity-jeebies until I know what's wrong! Anyway, how heavy could it be?" He laughed wryly. "Can't possibly be as bad as that triangle feller, can it?"

Ford didn't know what expression had appeared on his face, but the effect on Fiddleford was instantaneous. His smile vanished; his lined face went as white as his beard. "Is it as bad?"

Ford winced. "Let me explain—"

"It's him." Fiddleford didn't phrase it as a question. "No. It can't— You're lyin'! You're lyin'!" He backed away from Ford as if he was the threat, tripped and tumbled to the floor, and scampered backward on his hands and feet.

And here was the screaming. Age had not dulled Fiddleford's hair-trigger panic response. Ford had hoped to explain it to him gently, ease him into the bad news before revealing who it was, but if all he could do now was damage control... Ford knelt down like he was trying to coax over a frightened cat. "Fiddleford, please—"

One of Fiddleford's legs spasmed, bouncing like a rabbit thumping its foot in warning of predators. "Not him! The beast— The beast with just one—"

"Two eyes," Ford corrected.

And the unexpectedness of the correction momentarily cut straight through Fiddleford's panic. His wild eyes focused on Ford in bafflement. "Say wha?"

"He has two eyes now," Ford said. "And he's powerless and imprisoned. He survived—but he's not a threat." It was a slight exaggeration, but Ford's first priority was calming Fiddleford down. He could introduce nuance once Fiddleford wasn't panicking.

"He's—He's not a—He's—"

"Deep breath," Ford said.

Fiddleford sucked in a deep breath, held it just long enough that Ford was starting to worry, and let it out in a long, deep gush. "Whoo!" He smacked his head with his palm, and then another couple times for good measure. "Sorry 'bout that. Just—got a little excited. Let me catch my..." He took another couple of deep breaths.

Ford waited patiently. "You're better at dealing with alarming news than you used to be." Maybe that wasn't the best praise, considering that Ford had usually been the one delivering the alarming news.

"I'm not sure I am. I think I just get it all out of my system faster." Fiddleford took one last deep breath, and said, "All right. Explain this to me."

Ford gave Fiddleford the rundown on the last two weeks—Bill's arrival, his capture, the stalemate as they realized that neither side could risk Bill's death without knowing what would happen. He explained everything they knew or suspected about Bill's current powers or lack thereof, and how they were containing and neutralizing him further.

He even pulled out his current journal to show Fiddleford Bill's appearance: a few days ago, Ford had gotten a drawing of Bill in the living room watching TV, huddled up against the armrest of the sofa as if he wanted to stay as close to the doorway as possible, one eye squeezed shut, the other glazed with disinterest, the corners of his mouth curled down despondently. Ford had done the quick rough sketch while watching Bill from the kitchen, then retreated to his room to flesh out the details. There was no way Ford was neglecting to properly document the unwelcome phenomenon occurring in his house, but there was doubly no way Ford was giving Bill's ego the pleasure of knowing he was drawing him again.

Fiddleford cocked a brow. "Bill's a woman?"

"I'm not sure whatever force humanized him was too picky about the sex," Ford said. "For that matter, I'm not sure he's picky about his sex. It's never come up." What kind of genders did Bill's species have? Did they have genders? Ford should ask. (Ford should not ask. He took that idea, stuffed it in a bag, and threw it in a lake.)

"Huh." Fiddleford gave Ford a skeptical look. "Y'all're letting him watch TV?"

"He's threatened to kill himself if he gets too bored," Ford said tiredly. "He knows if we were to completely lock him up, he'd be as good as dead, since we could just keep him there until we find a guaranteed way to kill him. He says he'd sooner die by his own hand in that circumstance, and he's mad enough I think he'd make good on it. So, to maintain the current stalemate, we've agreed on some... limited privileges."

"Including television."

"Honestly? Moving the TV out of the living room just so he couldn't watch it didn't seem worth the trouble. We use that TV too."

Fiddleford grunted; but he offered the journal back to Ford. He offered it held open, and his gaze didn't break from Bill's face until Ford shut it and put it back into his jacket pocket. "So," Fiddleford said. "You said you need help?"

"Yes. At the moment, we're safe from Bill. All we have to do is find a way to destroy both his body and whatever's inside it, whether it's a human soul or an energy being—and use it before he learns we have it and does something drastic."

Fiddleford pressed his lips together, so thin they disappeared behind his whiskers. "Stanford, I want to help any way I can, but none of my killer robots or deadly lasermajigs are designed for incineratin' space demons. I don't rightly know if I can help."

"But you've already helped. You—" Ford hesitated. "You might want to brace yourself for another shock."

Fiddleford wrapped his arms around his chest and laced his hands together behind his back. "Ready!"

"While I was exploring other dimensions, I found a parallel Earth where you—where we..." Ford swallowed his guilt. "Where... things turned out better. Your parallel self helped me perfect my weapon to destroy Bill."

"A parallel..." Fiddleford's gaze briefly went wall-eyed as he processed the implications of the second life-altering revelation of the hour; but he quickly shook himself out of it. "Well, shucks, then this oughta be easy as pie! If I can do it, then so can I! So tell me about this weapon."

Soos appeared at the top of one of the stairs at the end of the great hall. "Hey, dudes! What's the hold up? We're ready to roll!"

"We'll be right there," Ford called, then turned back to Fiddleford. "Perhaps I should show you the blueprints after the show."

They headed for the stairs. Fiddleford gave Ford a cheeky grin. "Stanford Pines, shilly-shallying around watching cartoons when there's work to be done? Now, my memory ain't what it used to be, but that don't sound like the Stanford I recall."

"I've learned the hard way that a strict diet, exercise regimen, and regular meditation alone can't save a human from burning himself out." The image of Bill's eye and Cheshire Cat smile peering out from beneath a dark towel flashed through Ford's mind. He pushed the memory aside. "Now more than ever, I need to make time for a little play." Goodness knows he hadn't made any time in the last couple of weeks, unless that emotionally fraught trip to Portland counted. "Besides, I—don't want to ruin your evening with my problem."

Fiddleford reached up to put a hand on Ford's shoulder. "That sonova cosine ain't your problem; he's ours. All of ours."

"Thank you, Fiddleford." It was exactly what he needed to hear.

At the top of the stairs, Fiddleford hopped in the air, kicked his heels together, and shouted, "Now let's go watch some giant robots commit atrocities against God! YEEHAW!" He tore off down a corridor with Ford chasing close behind.

####

Stan had given Wendy a copy of the Mystery Shack's keys a year ago, back when the only secrets in the shack had been hidden beneath the vending machine. She still had them, and she could still let herself in at any time; she'd just needed an excuse to minimize how much trouble she'd get in if she was caught.

"Sorry, I forgot my ice cream was here and I just came to pick it up" was a much lower offense than "I was sneaking in specifically to find out the thing you were trying to keep me from finding out."

Staking out the shack from the woods was boring work—she would've liked to bring a friend along, but then she really couldn't use the "I was just swinging by to grab my food" excuse—but she could pass the time whittling until she lost light, and after that she had like a billion scary story podcasts to go through.

Friday night was anime night. Around seven, Soos's truck pulled out, with Melody and Ford on board. That was right—she'd seen Ford talking to Soos about joining in on anime night. One less person she had to look out for. Half past ten, the last light in the shack turned out.

Wendy went in.

She automatically avoided the creakiest floor boards as she let herself in the front door, and then crept into the kitchen. She closed her eyes as she groped around in the freezer for the sorbet she'd left behind so that the light couldn't disrupt her night vision. There. Excuse retrieved. If anyone caught her now, she could wave her dessert in their face and pull the dumb teen routine.

Now what?

All she knew about the shack's latest secret was that it had ripped up Soos's coat, it might be psychic, and it was possibly locked up and shouting mad about it. That didn't give her a lot to go on. The kitchen didn't look much different. Less clutter out on the counters and shelves than usual, but that wasn't evidence of paranormal activity. Maybe Abuelita had gone on a cleaning spree.

She'd start with safer locations and move out from there. If she was caught, where would she get in the least trouble for snooping?

Sorry guys, I just came by to get my sorbet; and then I really needed to use the bathroom, so I thought it wouldn't be a big deal if...

She crept out of the kitchen.

Wendy wasn't risking waking anyone by turning on lights; but by the glow of her phone's screen and the living room fish tank, she could see that Abuelita's sofa was missing its cushions. No signs of anything else weird though. She crept down the dark hall, phone pressed to her chest to hide the glow until she'd passed the guest room and Abuelita's room.

Her heart leaped into her throat when she tried to grasp the downstairs toilet's doorknob, but only brushed fabric instead. She held up her phone. They'd replaced the door with a curtain? That was weird, but...

She pulled the curtain aside.

Something sat cross-legged on the closed toilet. One blood-dripping yellow eye stared up at Wendy.

Wendy screamed.

"Hello to you too," the thing said. "Come in?"

Wendy punched it in the eye and bolted.

She heard it stumble-thud out of the bathroom, call, "Wait, wait—Wendy!" and then laugh, and then mutter, "ow, ow, ow."

Wendy slowed halfway to the exit as what she'd just seen fully registered. That was a human person. Whom she'd socked in the face.

Wendy about-faced. "Oh, man, I'm so sorry. Are you okay?" She came back and flipped on the bathroom light to check for damage.

The stranger was a heavyset brown-skinned woman with a mass of loose golden curls hanging to her shoulder blades, wearing a baggy yellow hoodie and knee-length skirt—and something about her was familiar, but Wendy couldn't put her finger on what. The stranger shrugged, grinning, and said, "It's not the worst thing to happen to that eyeball today!" She moved an eyepatch over from her left eye to cover the bloody eye Wendy had socked—and that was why Wendy had only seen the one eye in the dark. The eyepatch.

Wow, smooth move, Wendy, punching somebody for having a painful-looking eye condition. She winced. "Sorry. Do you... wanna ice that?" She awkwardly held out her sorbet.

The stranger looked at the pint thoughtfully. "Can I eat it instead?"

"Um. No?" Wendy pulled it back. "Hey—did you call me Wendy? How'd you know my name?"

The stranger shrugged. "What, you work here, don't you? I see you all the time."

So they had met before? Wendy studied the stranger's face, trying to remember where—and then her eyes widened. "Wait—hold on, Toga Lady? No way!"

"Wh—yeah, that's me!" She laughed. "I can't get over how many people recognize me because of that."

"Yeah, everyone in town knows you." She flipped open her phone to show Toga Lady a meme Tambry sent a couple days ago: the picture Wendy had taken of her in the gift shop that spread all over town, currently captioned, "When you're meeting Plato but still wanna look kawaii."

Toga Lady cracked up. "Hey, I love that! Send that to Sh—Mabel, I wanna save that."

"Sure." Did Toga Lady not have a phone? Or maybe just didn't want to hand her number out to a stranger who punched her in the dark. "So... what are you doing here? Are you visiting the Pines?" Wendy vaguely remembered Toga Lady asking about the Pines a few months ago. "Who are you?"

"The name's Goldie," the stranger said. "And I'm... just staying here for a bit. As a house guest." (And, Bill realized, if Wendy asked him any more than that, he was in trouble. He and the Pines had very briefly arranged his cover story: if and when somebody noticed him, he was Goldie Locke and he was staying as a guest. But why was he staying as a guest, where had he come from, how long would he be here... they'd never gotten that far. He'd better think up some boring cover story the Pines wouldn't object to—maybe claim to be one of Abuelita's distant relatives, staying with family between jobs...)

Wendy said, "So, hold on. Are you the big mysterious supernatural phenomenon the Pines have been trying not to talk about?"

Goldie blinked. And then a brilliant, gleeful smile stretched across her face. "Wow, you're a smart one! How did you guess?"

####

To Fiddleford's evident despair, Soos had made good on his threat to put a moratorium on mecha anime. Instead, he played a few episodes of a period drama about a former samurai, desperate to retire from the sword, who kept running into civilians with inconvenient problems that could only be solved with a two-foot steel blade.

In the 1920s, the Northwests had added a private movie palace to their manor so they wouldn't have to watch picture shows with the common folks; and it hadn't take Soos much work to rig up a new projector to play from his laptop. The Northwests had outfitted the theater with armchairs, loveseats, and coffee tables, which had conveyed with the manor. Once the show was over and the snacks were cleared aside, one of the coffee tables made a perfect space for Ford to spread out his blueprints and research notes. While Soos, Melody, and Tate discussed the likelihood that unemployed samurai really used their swords to rescue stuck cats by chopping down tree branches, Ford explained the quantum destabilizer to Fiddleford.

It was a death ray designed to obliterate whatever it hit—whether matter, energy, both, neither, or other. If it hit a human, they'd be crushed into nothing. If it hit something as powerful as Bill, he'd be fatally collapsed into a miniature black hole, taking anything under his influence with him, and then he'd disappear. No matter what Bill was now, this could kill him.

The problem was the fuel, which Ford had obtained from another Fiddleford, who in turn had obtained it in a paradox dimension: an element that was inert when observed and highly radioactive when concealed. Parallel Fiddleford had named it NowUSeeitNowUDontium. But Ford had used up the last of his fuel on a wild shot during Weirdmageddon. And—short of rebuilding that accursed portal and venturing back out into the multiverse—Ford didn't know how to get more.

"Your parallel self helped me make all the modifications to my destabilizer to let it run on Dontium," Ford said. "You know your own mind better than anyone else. Perhaps if you see your parallel self's design modifications, you might be able to deduce the necessary properties of the substance used to fuel it, and we could... find a way to synthesize an artificial substitute, maybe?"

Fiddleford frowned worriedly at the blueprints. "Frankly, I don't know that I do know my own mind," he said. "But... I'll take a look-see at this, see what I can make of it."

"That's all I ask. Thank you, Fiddleford."

"What'll we do if I can't work it out, though?"

He'd already wondered that himself. Making an element was harder than finding one. There was a reason the gold miners outlasted the alchemists. "We'll find another way. Maybe adapt the destabilizer to another fuel source. I initially designed it for portability in anticipation of a fight with a highly mobile, flying opponent. Now that it'll be used for the execution of a captive, portability is less important. Perhaps it could be modified to plug into an external fuel source?"

"It'd have to be ginormous," Fiddleford said dubiously. "What about that infernal-lookin' summoning circle you had us try? Is that still an option?"

"I've considered it, but... there are four members of the zodiac who still don't know Bill's alive—and they're all children. I never learned exactly what the zodiac does, much less whether it would have any effect on Bill as a human, so I don't want to get them involved just to discover that solution doesn't work. The destabilizer will work."

"If'n we can fuel it."

Ford sighed. "We'll call the zodiac 'plan B.'"

####

On the way out, Ford stopped in the door and said, "Oh, Fiddleford—I nearly forgot." He took out a folded paper he'd stowed in his journal's cover and handed it to Fiddleford, grinning.

It was a hand-made card, with a cover that featured a cake and puffy stickers that read, "PARTY!" Inside was a crayon drawing of Stan and Ford holding hands and smiling next to the words, "Come to our 62nd birthday party!!! Saturday, June 15, 1:00 PM, at the Mystery Shack!!! DON'T BE LATE!!!!!"

Wryly, Fiddleford asked, "Did you make this yourself?"

"Mabel helped," Ford admitted. "I almost forgot our birthday entirely until she brought it up this morning."

"Did you? Now I don't feel so bad that I'd plumb forgot myself. Tomorrow—whoo-ee." A hint of anxiety entered his eyes. "Will the party attendees be including...?"

"We're having our party outside. Our 'houseguest' 'Goldie' is not allowed outside."

Fiddleford immediately relaxed. "Then I'll be there, don't you worry! With gifts, too!"

"Then we'll see you tomorrow." As Ford followed Soos down the long driveway toward his truck, he mused to himself that he couldn't remember the last time he'd had a birthday party. He didn't think he'd ever invited somebody outside his family to a birthday party and thought they would actually come. Felt good.

Ford was halfway to the truck when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see Tate. Had they ever spoken one-on-one before? "Tate? What can I do—"

Tate took a step too close, and Ford's back immediately went stiff. "Don't think I didn't see those blueprints you were showing my Dad," Tate said. "Now, you listen here, Dr. Pines." He said "doctor" like it was an insult. "Thirty years ago I lost my father thanks to you and your stupid science project, and I just got him back. I ain't keen on losing him again. Is that clear?"

Oh. "I—yes. Perfectly clear. I don't want any trouble. I'm asking for his help to prevent trouble, actually."

Tate drawled, "Oh, yeah? That so? You usually need futuristic laser bazookas to prevent trouble?"

How good a look had Tate gotten at the blueprints? He'd been on the other side of the room. "Tate... listen." Ford took a deep breath. "You've got every reason to distrust me. Thirty years ago, I was so wrapped up in my own problems that I turned my back on your father when he needed help the most—and you, your mother, and he all suffered greatly for it. But whatever happens, I won't turn my back on him again. I promise."

Tate considered that in sullen silence. "Fine," he said. "See you don't. But I've got my eye on you."

He turned back toward the manor, paused, and faced Ford again. "When I came to Gravity Falls, the first place I went was the last address Dad wrote from. The man who answered the door said he never knew no McGucket and he'd never stayed there. I called him a dirty liar, and he chased me off his property with a hammer." He pointed at Ford. "You... You were gone by then, weren'tcha? That was your brother."

Ford's stomach dropped. "That's right. That... Stanley didn't know anything. We were estranged the whole time I knew your father. I didn't even call Fiddleford by name in my journals."

"All these years he told me he never knew my father, I thought he was just too big a coward to own up to what he'd done. When all along I was resentin' an innocent man, while you were..." He trailed off; then set his jaw firmly, squared his shoulders, and said, "Welp. You take responsibility like a man. I hope you act like one, too."

Ford shrugged helplessly. "I've been trying to."

Tate nodded once. "Good to finally meet the real you, Dr. Pines," he said coolly. Then he turned back toward the manor and walked away.

####

Stan was sure he'd heard a scream.

He stared at the ceiling. It was too late for people to be screaming. He didn't wanna get up. He couldn't hear anything now; but then, his hearing aids were out. Which meant the scream must have been really loud.

Grumbling, he sat up, put in his hearing aids, put in his teeth, put on his glasses, put on his slippers, dragged himself upright, and shuffled to the door.

The moment he stepped out, he could hear Bill's voice, chattering from some dark corner of the shack: "I was actually one of Stanford's research assistants! Haha! Yeah, during the earliest portal tests, I got sucked into the psychic plane between reality and dreams—ever heard of the 'mindscape'?—and everyone assumed it killed me! I've actually been haunting the shack like a ghost for the last three decades! It sure is great to be alive again!"

Stan's first thought, still half asleep, was, I don't remember Ford telling me about that part. And his second thought was, Wait. Who's Bill talking to?

Then he heard Wendy's laugh and his blood ran cold. "Aw man, that's insane! What'd you eat? Is there food in the mindscape?"

"I didn't need to eat, sleep, or age! Convenient, huh? Now I look thirty years too young!"

"How'd you keep from getting crazy bored without anyone to talk to?"

"I watched TV over Stanley's shoulder and eavesdropped on tourists' marital problems! I saw you all summer—"

Stan followed their voices to the living room and fumbled on the light switch. Wendy started and cringed back into the armchair she'd claimed, squinting in the bright light. Bill, who'd been standing in the dark like a creep, didn't flinch—but he slowly stood a little straighter.

"What the heck's going on in here?" Stan snapped.

"Hey, Mr. Pines," Wendy said weakly. "Sorry—I forgot my ice cream when I left," she held up a pint, "so I came back for it and... um..."

"I spooked her in the dark and she socked me!" Bill laughed.

Stan moved between Wendy and Bill. "She's got the right idea." As Stan moved further into the room, Bill circled him to get closer to the doorway.

"But—I mean, is Goldie all you were keeping secret?" Wendy asked. "I worked here all last summer. I know what this place is like! You know I can handle learning that some woman's been stuck in a parallel plane—right?"

Before Stan had a chance to say anything, Bill piped up again: "They're all just worried about the thirty-year-old missing person case they could have helped solve! But hey, I don't mind. I'm sure the only reason they didn't try to find me was because Ford thought I was dead and Stan didn't know about me." Bill looked straight in Stan's eyes. "Isn't that right?"

Oh, Bill had them all over a barrel now.

A good two-man con was a lot like good improv theater, in that neither actor could contradict the other one's story; once one of them introduced a detail, the other one had to agree "yes, and—" and roll with it. No matter how stupid or insane your partner's contribution, if you start arguing about your story in front of your mark, they'll know you're lying—and there goes your mark.

Stan knew that. Bill knew Stan knew that.

And Bill had gotten to Wendy first. Now, unless Stan wanted to completely spill the triangular beans to Wendy, he had no choice but to play along and "yes, and" Bill's stupid story about being Ford's assistant.

Fine. But no way was Stan playing along on Bill's terms.

Stan scoffed loudly. "Or maybe the reason my brother didn't try to find you is because you're a no-good lying creep who"—(what do nerds hate each other for?)—"tried to steal his research!"

From the corner of his eye, Stan could see Wendy's eyebrows shoot up and her mouth open slightly. Yeah, good. Yes-and that, Cipher.

Stan expected anger. There wasn't anger. The ghost of a smile flickered across Bill's face before he got his expression under control. There was a spark of light in his eye, like something sleeping in him had activated.

In the split second between Bill's lips parting and the first syllable emerging, Stan realized—a moment too late—that he'd made a terrible mistake. Bill wasn't just a con artist. He was one of those guys. The guys who got into crime because they couldn't get into theater. The divas. The attention hogs. The guys who enjoyed lying for the thrill of it.

And Stan had just given him an opportunity for drama.

"Steal it?" Bill snapped. "Steal it?" He raised a hand and pointed a thumb at himself, elbow jutted out to the side, chest puffed up, making himself bigger. "I am his research! Over half the stuff he put in his journals comes from material I dug up for him! By his third journal, he was practically my ghostwriter! But do you think I was gonna get a co-author credit?"

"Oh, that's a load of bull—slander," Stan snapped. "I am not letting you talk about my brother like that! He did all the hard work while you, what—" what fit the story they were inventing, "—picked up books for him at the library like a good little undergrad—?"

"Hey!" Bill turned sideways to jab a finger at Stan, like a fencer making his profile narrower before driving his sabre home. "Post grad! I was working on my dissertation! And I didn't just 'pick them up'; I found the books he needed, usually because I'd already read them and he hadn't!"

"Oh, you read a few books! Oooh, I'm so impressed! But you're not the one who wrote about them, sister!"

"HA! The hundreds of pages of notes I gave him say otherwise! So what if I wanted to publish first while he was hoarding the fruits of my labor in his basement, it was my right—!"

Stan bellowed, "That kind of talk is why you got dismissed from your dissertation program for plagiarism!"

All righteous indignation, Bill raised his voice to match, "The plagiarism charges were unproven! I dropped out on my own terms!"

"Oh SUUURE, because you wanted to see the WOOORLD! And how much of the world did you see hiding in a podunk logging town doing my brother's primary research for him, huh?!"

"HA!" Voice nearly a shriek, finger raised to the heavens in triumph, Bill crowed, "SO YOU ADMIT I DID ALL THE PRIMARY RESEARCH—!"

Ford said, "What the devil is going on here?"

Stan and Bill fell silent. Ford stood in the entryway, looking one part irate and two parts bewildered. The front door was still open, Soos and Melody peering around Ford.

Ford could doom them. Stan knew how to improv like a con artist, Bill knew how to improv like a con artist, but did Ford? Ever since they'd been kids, he'd always been just a little slower with a lie. If Stan had a chance to ease him into the backstory they'd concocted without requiring him to improvise himself—hey, we were just explaining to Wendy how 'Goldie' used to be your research assistant until 'she' got eaten by a portal test—

"STANFORD," Bill snapped. Stan almost jumped out of his skin. Oh no. Bill glared at Ford, pointed at Stan, and said, "Tell Stanley the plagiarism charges were unfounded, I was unfairly accused!"

Stan held his breath.

Ford stared at Bill, and then stared at Stan—Stan could almost see the gears turning in his head—and then stared at Wendy, and then stared at Bill again. And then he snarled, "After you tried to beat me to publication, you two-faced liar?"

"HA!" Stan pointed at Bill's face, laughing too hard to speak. "HAAA!" He pounded on the TV, half hysterical with mirth, and had to lean on it as he wheezed for breath. Ford—what a dark horse, Stan could kiss his cheek—Ford was maintaining the most stoic poker face Stan had ever seen.

Bill was violently biting his lip, red in the face, brows drawn tight together, trembling all over. It took Stan a moment to realize Bill wasn't angry. He was battling hard to look furious—playing the part of the loser of the argument—when the creep was actually fighting not to laugh.

Bill made eye contact with Stan, very nearly lost it, and turned his back toward Wendy so she couldn't see his face. He gestured vaguely toward Stan and Ford and croaked, "You see what I have to put up with?"

"I dunno, man." Grinning, Wendy said, "Not to make light of the whole 'stuck haunting the shack for thirty years' thing, but it kiiinda sounds like you had it coming."

Mission accomplished. And let that teach Bill a lesson about trying to out-lie Stan Pines.

Soos waved a hand. "Hey, uh, what's going on—?"

Now that was a disaster waiting to happen. "I'll catch you up." Stan zoomed around Ford, scooped his arms around Soos's and Melody's shoulders, and hustled them out of the room.

####

"You're sure you want to bike home alone this late?" Ford was walking Wendy back to where she said she'd left her bike, just outside the clearing the Mystery Shack made in the forest. "I could give you a ride."

"Thanks, Mr. Pines, but I'm fine. This whole part of the forest is basically my backyard."

"If you insist." He supposed the Corduroy cabin wasn't that far off—the local kids probably ventured further on a regular basis. They just didn't usually drop by the Mystery Shack at this hour. "What were you doing visiting the shack, anyway?"

"I came back to get my ice cream," Wendy said, holding up her sorbet pint demonstratively. "Which... is probably completely melted by now." She shrugged, popped off the lid and drank it.

She came by this late for ice cream? Ford had his doubts. But then, if he'd been a sixteen-year-old with a summer job in a house keeping a supernatural secret, would he have done any differently? (He was just glad she hadn't worked out who their "guest" really was. He'd have to thank Stan later for his quick thinking with a cover story.)

Wendy picked up her bike and hit her helmet against a tree to dislodge any bugs that might have crawled in. "Hey, uh—please don't tell my dad I was over here, okay? I kinda didn't mention that I was going out."

Wendy was Boyish Dan's kid, wasn't she? How different they were. The Dan that Ford knew hadn't been much older than Wendy, but he'd regarded these woods with a respect that bordered on fear. He'd never be wandering around this late at night. "I can't imagine why I'd need to bring it up." Ford had snuck out for dumber reasons as a kid.

"Thanks, Mr. Pines." She put on her helmet and got on her bike. "I'll see you in the morning!"

"The morning? The party isn't until one, is it?"

"Yeah, but I'm running an errand with Mabel." Wendy waved as she left. In the dark, her arm blended in with the trees.

Ford hadn't heard Mabel mention any errands. What was she doing that she needed Wendy's help for?

Ford waited until he couldn't hear Wendy's bike anymore; and then headed back into the shack.

####

(Y'all have no idea how long I've been waiting to post that argument. If you enjoyed this chapter, please let me know what you thought! I need comments to survive. Like tinkerbell. Thanks!!)

#wendy corduroy #grunkle stan #(for the art)#bill cipher #human bill cipher #(for the overall fic)#gravity falls #gravity falls fanart #gravity falls fic #my art #my writing #bill goldilocks cipher #(with thanks to astro-b-o-y-d for the headcanon that McGucket hosts anime nights)

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