It's that feeling you get when you wake up for a few seconds, and then you fall right back asleep. That feeling where maybe you want to wake up all the way, but you can't, and that's all you know because the rest of your thoughts won't connect, and then you're asleep again.

But instead of a few seconds, it just kept going. It was a state of something near awareness. He was moving, and talking, and hearing, and seeing, but he wasn't, and he was, all at the same time.

He saw a pile of multi-colored sweaters. "Good," he thought, but he wasn't quite sure why.

He felt splintering wood. "Bad," he thought, and that was all he could think.

Crying. He heard familiar crying, and it triggered something in his mind. "Very bad," he thought.

He saw himself look up, and he heard himself laughing, and he saw a shaking, sobbing form that he knew, and he woke up. "Mabel!" He yelled, consciously, on purpose, and he felt pain in his hands and saw shining bits of glass in the blood covering his hands. He saw the splintered bedframe, and he saw the broken window, and he realized what was going on, and he saw his terrified sister. "Mabel, it's not-"

And then he heard that voice. So familiar and soothing and right. "Shush," it said, "Shush. It's alright. Go back to sleep. This will be over soon."

And he could do nothing but obey. He felt, and he heard, and he saw, and he didn't, all at once. He heard his sister again, cautiously approaching him, but not him, and he saw her reach her hand out and quietly whisper "Dipper, is that you?" before he lashed at her and he didn't. He heard her wail, a terrible cry he had never heard before and hoped never to hear again. He saw her open their secret trap door and quickly escape through it. He felt emotions that weren't his- anger, disappointment, determination- and he felt his own emotion, though he didn't realize it.

Dipper had never been so scared, and he felt it and he didn't.

"Mabel," he thought. "Mabel."

He also thought "help," but he didn't know how these two subjects were connected, and he wasn't entirely sure why he was thinking them.

Another subject surfaced and bobbed up and down in his awareness: "escape." It didn't make any sense either.

And he heard and did not hear the flipping of pages, and he saw and did not see the young girl clinging to the older man. The man was holding something that held a familiarity. "Book," he thought, and that brought a little bit more awareness forward. Then he saw and did not see the look of determination- and fear, perhaps- in the man's face, and that brought forward who the man was. "Great uncle," he thought, "Stan," he thought.

And he saw and did not see the girl- "Mabel," the increasing volume of his own thoughts reminded him- bury her face into the man's pant leg. He felt as though maybe he could hear the man reading out loud from the book, and he felt the other's emotion of irritation, and his own emotion of relief.

And suddenly, he was there, he was all there, he was awake, and the other was gone. He saw, felt, and heard himself falling onto the floor, and it was wonderful.

He heard Mabel sniffling, and it was bittersweet.

"...Dip?"

"I'm... I'm here."