Yesterday's Tomorrows

(Monday, August 8, 2016)

Chapter 8: Emerging

"O Mistress mine, where are you roaming?

O stay and hear! your true-love's coming

That can sing both high and low;

Trip no further, pretty sweeting,

Journeys end in lovers' meeting—

Every wise man's son doth know."—William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night.

"What is it? What is it?" Dipper yelled frantically, worried out of his mind. "Wendy?"

Ahead of him, blocking his way and his vision, she wriggled and twisted, yipping and yelping and—giggling. "No, no, no!" she yelled. "No, boy, get down, glad to see you but—hey, no, not my hair!" She was laughing hard.

"What is it?" Dipper asked. "I'd like to get out of here—"

Wendy grunted. "Yeah, me, too, but somebody's blocking the way. Back up. Back up, that's right. Good, good." She scrambled forward. "OK, I'm out!"

Wendy scuttled out into the sunshine, and Tripper, cone and all, galumphed past her and into the mouth of the exit and despite the cone he wore, started frantically licking Dipper's face. "Pull him back, please!" Dipper pleaded. "It's good to see him, but man, he's enthusiastic!"

"Tripper! Good boy! Come! Come, Tripper!" Dipper recognized Mabel's voice—her young voice—and a butt-waggling Tripper awkwardly backed out of the cave, letting Dipper scramble out into the open. He jumped up and laughed with sheer relief. "Sis!" he said, hugging her and picking her up off the ground. He spun her around. "It's so good to see you!"

"Whoa-ho-ho, Broseph! C'mon, put me down, I'm too heavy for this, you'll hurt yourself."

Dipper set her down. "What day is it?" he asked.

Mabel laughed like a loon. Choking, she said, "Oh, sorry. I'm sorry, but you reminded me of when our fifth-grade class put on A Christmas Carol for the PTA! Remember? You were the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come—" she turned to Wendy and explained, "the Ghost doesn't have any lines, and Dipper's a terrible actor—"

"No, I'm not!" Dipper objected. "I just had a touch of stage fright, that's all."

"Yeah, yeah, you couldn't even get out 'God bless us, every one!' Anyway, Wendy, I was the Intelligent Lad. And Scrooge, that was Roddy Creeley, he yells to me, 'I say, Boy, what day is to-day?' And I was supposed to say, 'To-day, sir? Why, to-day is Christmas Day!' and then he'd send me to get the turkey, but—" she doubled over laughing—"but Rodney Creeley had made me mad by pinching my bottom, I'd never go with him anyhow, and he played Scrooge 'cause he was so skinny, so I—" more laughing—"I yelled back to him, 'To-day, sir? Why, to-day is June nineteenth!'"

"She really stopped the show," Dipper said to Wendy. "Oh, Wen, your clothes are all ripped."

The left shoulder of her green-plaid flannel shirt was torn all the way loose at the seam, and her bare skin showed through—and her jeans were not only laddered, but hanging in shreds from her right thigh, a big rip from panty-line to knee showing her scratched leg. "Yeah, I kinda got in too much of a hurry," she said. "'S OK, I've got a change in the Shack."

Mabel had picked up the over-enthusiastic Tripper. She set the dog down again—he pranced all around them in the crazy, celebratory way that dogs do. You leave the house, your loving doggie comes to the door and looks at you with sad eyes as you depart, you shut the door. Count to ten and open the door again, and the pup goes into a dogasm of joy: "You're back! You're back! You're back at last! I thought you'd never return! I was so lonely!"

That's what Tripper was doing.

"Yeah, that Christmas play was fun," Dipper said, stooping to pet the dog and calm him down. "But seriously, what day is it, Mabel? For real?"

Wendy had checked her phone. "Says here it's Sunday afternoon."

"Sunday nothing! Try Monday morning!" Mabel said. "You guys disappeared! What happened to your clothes, Wendy, did my Brobro get a little too ardent in his wooing?" She turned to Dipper. "That means—"

"I know what it means," Dipper said. "And no. We were exploring the cave, and we got into a very tight spot—"

"I'll just bet you did, you sensualist!" Mabel said with a grin, slapping him on the back.

"Ow! Stop it. No kidding, there's some real tight spots in a narrow crevice passage, and we had a hard time getting—"

"Mabel! Where are you?"

Dipper blinked. "Grunkle Ford?"

"Well, you two were missing, and we thought maybe you'd eloped to Reno—is that right, do people elope to Reno to get an emergency wedding? Wherever. Anyway, we got worried when neither of you answered your phones, and Grunkle Ford—we're over HERE, GRUNKLE FORD! I FOUND THEM!—Grunkle Ford flew a drone around and located the Dodge Dart and we drove out with Tripper, and he sniffed you out through the woods. Hi, Grunkle Ford, Dipper attacked Wendy and ripped most of her clothes off. Hormones."

Ford emerged from the undergrowth, his glasses askew, his eyes blinking. "What? What?"

"It's a Mabel story," Dipper said. "We were exploring this cave—"a

"I boarded that up thirty-six years ago!" Ford said, staring at the stacked redwood planks. "You kids shouldn't have broken in!"

"It's cool, Dr. P.," Wendy said. "We're OK. Just tore our clothes a little getting back to the pictographs. Dip's gonna have some serious stuff to tell you, though. Man, my dad's gonna kill me!"

"No, Mabel took care of that," Mabel said. "Ha. Mabel likes talking about Mabel in the third person! Seriously, really, I called him last night when I couldn't get you guys on the phone, and told him you were staying over, and he said he guessed it would be OK, but now it's like nine-thirty in the morning, so you'd probably better call him."

Dipper was looking at his phone. "Mine's just corrected from five p.m. yesterday to nine thirty-three Monday," he said. "Grunkle Ford, we got caught in a time loop."

"Time loop?" Ford asked. "Did you actually reach the inner chamber?"

"The one with the Indian signs—'scuse me, shouldn't say that, the Native American art, I mean, yeah," Wendy said. "All those pictographs of Bill Cipher."

"Indeed," Ford said. "I've always sensed something odd went on with time inside that chamber! It's like what my brother calls the Outhouse of Mystery. Time passes differently there."

"We discovered something that Bill Cipher, not the Native Americans, created," Dipper said.

"Indeed?" Ford put his six-fingered hand against the rocky bluff, as if taking its stony pulse. "This tunnel once led to the medicine lodge of Modoc, the great Chinook mystic, who had an encounter and confrontation with Bill Cipher back in the 1860s. In fact, this is where I made the worst mistake of my life—"

"You summoned Bill Cipher," Dipper said. "We know, but—"

Wendy was on the phone and waved for silence. "Hi, Dad? You and the boys were OK with breakfast this morning? Oh, man. Yeah, I'll go straight to the house and start cleaning up. What? He is? Where? I can hear the saws goin', man! Yeah, Dad, I know that. Fine, don't worry, I'll take care of the house and all. Love you, Dad." She clicked the off button. "Dad and the boys are upstate for a couple days, helping Junior with a rush logging operation for the state, clearing some treefalls that blocked a highway after all that rain. They won't be back before Thursday morning, but—Dad says the boys left the house a mess, so I've got to go clean up on my day off."

"I'll come and help," Dipper volunteered.

Mabel nudged him. "I'll bet you will!"

It was all confusing for a while, but they eventually sorted things out: Ford would drive Dipper back to the Mystery Shack and Dipper would tell him the story of what had happened in the cave on the way. Mabel and Tripper would ride back with Wendy. At the Shack, she'd clean up and get a change of clothes, and later she and Dipper would go to work on setting the Corduroy house to rights.

Ford was an excellent listener, waiting for pauses to interject his questions. "Fascinating," he said. "I didn't experiment with that particular glyph, but obviously rigging it was one of Cipher's tricks. He couldn't fully manifest in the real world, but his servants—Modoc's acolytes, as long as Modoc was under the spell of Cipher's lies—could follow his directions, just as I did in constructing my Portal. From what you say, Cipher perverted what Modoc imagined to be a place where their minds could join in communion to create a kind of computer storage device where, even from the Mindscape, Cipher could make his plans and test their efficacy. The time element—well, it probably let him at least glimpse possible alternative futures to help guide his actions."

"Something like that, I suppose," Dipper said.

"Did Cipher physically attack you?" Ford asked. "You're very scratched up, and I noticed that Wendy had swatches of fabric missing from her attire. She seems to have some abrasions, too, unless the two of you tussled—"

Dipper chuckled. "Don't listen to Mabel! No, remember how you had to squeeze through that crevice to get to the pictograph chamber?"

"Very well," Ford said. "Even back then it was a tight fit for me. Had I been the least bit claustrophobic, I'd never have made the passage. Today I'd probably emerge with torn clothing, too! I've gained a bit of weight."

"You could still make it," Dipper assured him. "But Wendy and I were anxious to get out. The first time we left, we came out in some alternate time line sixty-five years from now—like 2081! And Billy Sheaffer was in his seventies and knew he'd been Bill Cipher and actually helped us and was taking care of Mabel—it was weird, she was very old—and anyway, he sent us back to the inner cave with partial instructions. We couldn't make them work at first, and I had to go into the Mindscape to clarify some things with Bill, and—here we are. The tearing and the skinned knees were on us, not Bill. Our fault, and the fact that we were, um, scared and scrambling to get out."

"Do me a huge favor," Ford said, parking the car in the Shack lot. "Write all this up in your Journal in full detail and give me a copy. I'll definitely want to visit that cave again."

"Might not be a good idea," Dipper warned delicately.

"No, you misunderstand. Visit it to ascertain that no one else is trapped inside on a time loop, and then make sure the place is properly sealed up for good this time, so that no one else ever wanders in and finds himself in the kind of trouble you've just had."

"All right," Dipper said. "I'll write it all up for you, everything I remember."

The time difference started to catch up with him. Dipper felt jet-lagged—he'd missed a night of sleep by short-cutting time through the device. And he and Wendy were ravenous. They ate an impressive brunch, which they mostly prepared themselves, and although Mabel had eaten breakfast, she joined in to help them eat: poached eggs on a bed of spinach and an English muffin, with Hollandaise sauce, huevos rancheros (courtesy of Abuelita), and chicken sausage on the side. Plenty of good coffee and eight-ounce glasses of orange juice rounded the meal out.

Wendy showered and changed, dumping her damaged clothes in the garbage—"These were old, anyhow. Have to visit the Sprawl-Mart for some replacements," she said. "I have enough work clothes, but my leisure wardrobe's getting threadbare."

By noon, Dipper and Wendy were at Casa Catastrophe, aka the Corduroy house. "Man!" Dipper said, looking around the kitchen, a scene of devastation. "How in the heck do they dirty up every pot and pan in the whole place, just for one dinner and then breakfast?"

"They never plan to wash up, so they don't think it matters," Wendy said. "Yuck, what's this burnt mess? Smells putrid. I think it maybe started out to be pancakes, but now it's carbon!"

They practically had to take a cold chisel to the big cast-iron skillet. And then after all the dish washing and drying, the emptying of the garbage and the changing of the tablecloth, they had to sweep and mop and clean up spills, then vacuum the living room and Wendy's room . . . they did everything but make Manly Dan's and the boys' beds. "I draw the line there," Wendy said. "I toss in the sheets and pillowcases and covers, and sometimes they put 'em on the bed and sometimes they just let 'em lay and sleep in the dirty sheets for another week, until even they can't stand the grit."

At four that afternoon, the two tired teens settled onto the living-room sofa—and promptly fell asleep, leaning against each other.

The Corduroy house stood about six miles from the Mystery Shack by road, maybe four miles cross-country. Mabel, fueled by a breakfast, brunch, and lunch, took Tripper on a long walk—the vet had recommended exercise—and they happened to wander through the woods in that direction, crossing over a creek on a rustic log bridge and winding up in the Corduroy backyard.

"Might as well see if they need help," Mabel said.

She and Tripper very quietly climbed the slope and found the back door unlocked.

"Aw." Mabel stood in the doorway, looking at her brother and his girlfriend asleep. She took one photo with her phone—the scene was innocent, and it wouldn't even matter if their mom saw the picture, she thought. Then, quietly, she and Tripper went back outside. Tripper yipped once—a squirrel was menacing the peace of the world high up in a redwood tree—but Mabel gently shushed him.

Through a hot August afternoon, girl and dog sauntered back to the Mystery Shack. At seven that evening, just as the Ramirezes and Mabel sat down to dinner, Dipper and Wendy turned up again.

"Dawgs!" said Soos. "Sorry I was in town when you two first got here this morning. We're so glad you guys are OK. We were like worried about you or some junk, you know?"

"It got a little scary," Wendy admitted. "But, like most things, I guess, everything turned out all right in the end. All it took was—" she glanced at Dipper and gave him her pretty smile—"a little time."

The End