CAROLINE
The entrance to the cave was some thirty miles outside of the small Oregonian town. After an hour of poking through the bushes and dense foliage in this part of the woods, she found the wooden boards blocking the cave’s one entry point. Wow, she thought, examining the nails that had been used. They were driven flush into stone. At least this meant she was in the right spot. She spent an hour digging into the old boards with an axe, muscles slamming the blade into the barricade. By the time there was enough room to squeeze through the broken boards with her backpack, the sun was setting in the fall sky. Caroline clicked her flashlight ON and began walking in. Every inch of the rocky passageway was thrown into sharp relief against her artificial light. After a few minutes, the narrow path she was following began opening up into a huge, cavernous room. Caroline gasped softly, narrowing her eyes. Oddly, she felt as though she needed to be quiet, as though she were entering a holy chapel.
The Hunter spun as she walked to the center, flooding every corner she could find with light until she caught the corner of a fading mural. Caroline jerked her light back to it with a start. Staring back at her in black and yellow paint was an unmistakably huge eye.
She steeled herself in the pitch darkness. “Hi there…” she said aloud to the demon’s portrait, listening for any answer or sound. The silence held. Caroline set down her bag, took out a camera and started taking pictures of the symbols in front of her. They would be copied into her journal tonight. As of tomorrow, she was blowing this cave sky-high, erasing its sordid history from the world. Hers would be the only remaining notes on the matter. The events of the last few weeks proved that information like this shouldn’t be available to civilians. It needed to be handled carefully, by people who knew what they were doing.
Next, she took out a long, sawed-off shotgun. Its bullets were consecrated and etched with power-binding curses, enough to make a powerful demon slow enough to hit with the blade at her right hip. She winced, thinking about having to fire the gun: the reverb was going to be terrible in here.
“Alright, Bill. Let’s do it.” Caroline muttered. It was the first time she’d said the entity’s name aloud. She could have sworn she felt the air sink. No, she scolded herself, just nerves. Her light shone on the summoning below Bill’s picture, and she began to read in the darkness.
@kalcqsia
Bill was in hell. Figuratively, of course. He had been stuck in a black limbo that felt eerily like the mindscape for what seemed like centuries. The Pines thought they had erased him along with Stanley’s mind, but that was only the form he had created for himself in their dimension. The return of Stan’s memory brought Bill back with it, but only partly. He could only fully return once he was summoned at the small cave outside of Gravity Falls. The question was, who would be the one to summon him? And when?
His mind would race. He had nothing but his thoughts and though he was no stranger to being alone, the lack of stimulation was driving him manic. He obsessed himself with thoughts of revenge. He was stronger than these children. How had he let himself be outsmarted? By Ford, nonetheless, whose mind he knew so well, who he spent years manipulating into doing his bidding. He wanted to make it right. He had to. He would wait as long as he had to-- which seemed as though it wouldn’t be much longer.
He began glowing and was slowly filled with the sensation of being summoned. “Oh yes... Oh YES.” His waiting was over. Before he knew it he was back in that little cave where it started. He was weak, he was tired. He was as vulnerable as he had ever been, but he was determined. Everything around him was hues of grey except for himself and the human before him, not much smaller than himself. He wanted to laugh. Wanted to rejoice in his salvation, but he was not so fast. He saw the weapons at her side. He didn’t fear earthly weapons, but he didn’t know how he could possibly hold up against them in his current state.
Instead of his usual power play, he paused and thought critically for once. This woman didn’t seem as though she summoned him with impure intentions. She was here to do what the Pines couldn’t. He began calculating a line of defense. His only hope was to talk this way out of this one. “Hiya, stranger! Say, this wouldn’t happen to still be the Holocene Epoch, would it?”
