Its Hour Come Round At Last

Again the shadow moveth o'er

The dial-plate of time."

-John Greenleaf Whittier, The New Year





Dipper closed the door to Mabel's hospital room and crossed back over to her, sitting in the chair next to her. "Okay. So we're all in agreement - the Epicurean Club needs to be investigated." Both women in the room nodded glumly, neither one of them bringing up the prospect that had just occurred to them. It was simply too horrible to contemplate, but that didn't make anything behind it necessarily untrue. The only way they could prove or disprove that horrible gut feeling was to start digging. "All right," Dipper said aloud. "The question now is, who else do we bring in on this? Should it be just the five of us, if we count Candy and Grenda? Or should we bring in others."

"There's at least one other person we should bring in on this," Mabel said immediately. "Melanie. Her sister was the one kidnapped."

Dipper grimaced. "Yeah," he said slowly, not wanting to broach this about one of his friends. "I've always gotten the sense that Melanie never quite believed our stories about Gravity Falls. Oh, she believed wholeheartedly that Pacifica was abused and that something serious did go down, Preston Northwest's trial had been national news, after all. However, I always got the sense that she didn't quite believe the more supernatural stuff. She's…very scientific. It's hard for her to accept something without physical evidence and we've both been on the receiving end of her 'eyewitness evidence is the worst possible scientific evidence' speech more than once."

"True but-"

They were interrupted by a loud rapping on the hospital door. Figuring it was probably a doctor or nurse here to stitch up Mabel's hands, Dipper got up and opened the door. When he did so, he saw instead a young woman about his age, who around five feet tall, with long black hair and dark eyes, crying in the doorway. She was wearing blue jeans and a blue T-shirt and looked for all the world like she wanted to stab someone, anyone. He couldn't blame her.

Dipper sighed glumly. "Hey, Melanie."

"Hey, Dipper," she said softly with a wan smile on her face. "How's Mabel?"

"I'm doing okay," Mabel said from behind her. "I'll need stitches on my hands, but other than that I'll be fine. How are you holding up?"

"I'm holding. I don't know how, but I am," she said in a hoarse and exhausted tone. "Thank you, Mabel, from me and my family. We know you did your best, and tell your friends thanks."

"I will," Mabel responded, bowing her head.

"If there's anything you or your parents need, Melanie," Dipper said softly. "Anything at all. You let us know."

"Thank you, Dipper," she said softly. After an awkward moment, she said, "Well, I should probably leave before the doctors get back. Excuse me."

"Wait, Melanie," Mabel said as Melanie turned to leave. "Paz, get the door again."

Pacifica looked at Dipper for a moment. Dipper, knowing that there was no stopping Mabel once she was set on something, nodded.

As soon as the door slammed shut, and as soon as Pacifica crossed back over to them, Mabel started in. "Dipper has a theory about all this."

"I don't want to call it a theory at this point," Dipper said reluctantly, both out of being unsure how Melanie would react and not liking the thought itself. "But…"

"Dipper," Melanie said very softly when he was finished. "I know you can get paranoid at times, but surely even you can see how utterly insane this sounds. Even if someone was kidnapping and eating kids in whole or in part, surely someone on the inside of this 'Epicurean Club' would have noticed."

"If you've seen the shit we've seen-" Dipper said, his temper flaring.

"Don't get me started on that Gravity Falls cra-"

"Damn it, Melanie! It happened!" Pacifica suddenly snapped from behind her, eyes blazing and hands balling into fists. For a second, he thought she was going to punch her. "We fought demons, and monsters and pervy gnomes and a psychotic nine year old with delusions of ultimate power! Dipper's great-uncle had a portal to other dimension that could destroy the universe and that's not even the half of it!"

Silence descended on the room again after Pacifica's outburst.

"You believe," Melanie said after a moment, genuine shock and surprise on her voice. She swept around, looking around at each of them in turn. "All of you do."

"Because it's what happened," Dipper said immediately. "And that's why I'm at least willing to investigate these suspicions about the Epicurean Club, instead of dismissing them. Hell, her 'father,' and I use the term loosely, brought their butler into their panic room with the express purpose of eating him if their supplies ran out. This, as horrible as it sounds, doesn't sound so farfetched after that."

Melanie stared at him for a moment longer, part of her still fighting to dismiss what he was saying. Then her face fell. "I believe you," she said a moment later.

"What was that?" Dipper and Pacifica said at the same time.

"Or I believe that you believe," she amended quickly. She gave him a look that suggested that despite what she just said, she did believe him, and the thought terrified her. "Maybe that's enough." Melanie sighed and nodded. "I'll see you guys tomorrow. I want to hear more about this." With that, she opened the door to the room and left without another word.

"Six?" Pacifica asked, as if hardly believing the exchange that had just taken place.

"Six," Dipper and Mabel said at once.

Later that night, Dipper stared at the bulletin board in his room, covered by a plain white sheet. It had been sitting there, untouched since the Fall of 2012. He hadn't expected to need it anymore, and for the past four years he hadn't. There simply hadn't been a mystery big enough or complex enough to justify using it again, so he'd kept it the way it was when he'd last used it, as a record of those events.

Now, though. It was needed again. He pulled the sheet off, letting it fall to the desk below it to reveal the vast complex of pictures and news articles, all connected by red thread that showed the tableau of mystery that had been Gravity Falls, Oregon. Wanting to keep some record of it, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his cellphone. He snapped a few pictures then, one by one, he pulled off every picture, every strand of red thread.

Red, he thought to himself, glumly. The color of blood. He swallowed the lump that suddenly appeared in his throat. The blood of children? He remembered what it was like, in Gravity Falls. He remembered the fabricated histories, the coverups of coverups, one great-uncle pretending to be the other great-uncle. He remembered the sheer horror of seeing that newspaper clipping in Stan's office, and the realization that he'd lied to them about his purpose that entire summer.

He remembered the sleepless nights. The nights spent staring up at the ceiling, wondering when Bill Cipher was going to show up again. Wondering when, not if, Gideon was going to come for his sister and have revenge on the rest of his family. It had scared the hell out of him. It still did even four years later. Even if it had all been worth it, even if it had secured the survival of mankind. At least for now.

And here he was, going down that rabbit hole again.

He opened the drawer under the bulletin board to see the Third Journal - the journal that had dominated his life that entire summer. He was sure that the information contained therein applied to more than just Gravity Falls. But in the past few years, he hadn't seen anything that could absolutely be corroborated as the supernatural. Oh, sure there were a few odd things. Sure, he'd occasionally felt cold shudders that might have been ghosts passing through. He'd seen odd things out of the corner of his eye. But it was nothing concrete, nothing solid he could go on. And he'd always had something else to do anyway. Be it homework, or, in the last year or so, Pacifica.

He couldn't stop the ghost of a smile that appeared on his face at that last part.

But now this had to happen. Sure, he missed fighting the good fight, but there was also the downside. The fear, the worry, the sleepless nights that often had him chewing on his own shirt.

I don't have a choice, Dipper thought to himself as he pulled off the last pieces of string. I didn't when I was twelve, and I sure as hell don't have a choice now.

With the board now clear of the accumulated evidence of the previous mystery, he picked up one of the pushpins before he grabbed the Epicurean Club brochure out of his pocket and stuck it on there. Then he grabbed his printout of the photo FBI-San Francisco had released of Jessica Ocampo as part of the AMBER Alert and stuck it on the board. He only had the barest conjecture to go on at this point so he didn't connect them with a piece of string.

He only prayed he never had too.

His heart skipped a beat as he heard a rapping on his window. He turned to see Pacifica crouching on the landing of his somewhat out –of-place fire escape. Breathing a sigh of relief, he crossed over to the window and opened it up, holding his hand out to help her in.

"Couldn't sleep?"

Pacifica shook her head. "A twelve-year-old girl could end up on someone's dinner plate soon, of course I can't sleep!" She looked up to see Dipper's bulletin board, shorn of its previous information relating to Gravity Falls. "I see you've reset the board."

"I felt like we had too. We don't know how deep this is going to get. And I wanted to get it ready."

"I would have suggested it, if you hadn't already done it, to be honest."

Pacifica walked over to his closet, grabbing the nightgown and extra pair of underwear she kept stashed in Dipper's room and began changing into her pajamas.

Briefly, Dipper considered stopping her at mid-undress and dragging her back to the bed. Briefly. Given everything that happened in the last few hours, he desired Pacifica's companionship more than what was between her legs tonight.

As he moved to get dressed for bed himself, his cellphone rang. He picked it up off his desk, and his eyes widened to see Wendy's photo on it.

Pressing the screen of the phone, he put his phone next to his ear. "Hey, Wendy," he said as lightly as he could under the circumstances

"Dipper," Wendy's voice rough. "I heard about what happened. How's Mabel? Is she okay?"

"She's fine, Wendy," Dipper said reassuringly. "She'll need stitches, and they want to keep her overnight, but the Doctor's say she should be out of there by tomorrow evening at the latest."

He heard Wendy's sigh of relief. "Thank God. So she should be out of the hospital by the time we get there?"

Shit. He forgot. Wendy and her friends had gotten into CSU San Francisco and they were coming down over the summer to familiarize themselves with the area.

"Oh, and uh, listen. You know how you always relished accompanying us on our missions?"

"Yeah," Wendy said, quizzically. "What are you saying, you've discovered another mystery?"

He looked up at the bulletin board behind him, with it's new and frankly disturbing evidence. "You could say that."

"Sweet!" Wendy said, excitement on her voice. "Summer has been really boring without you around here."

"Don't get too excited," Dipper said immediately, that horrible sinking feeling returning. "You're not going to like the implications of this one any more than I do."

"I didn't find much of what happened four years ago warm and fluffy either," Wendy said pointedly. "Still, it was…the good fight. We saved mankind, Dipper, and at least it wasn't boring." He heard a deep yawn on the other end of the line. "Anyway. We're due to be in town by tomorrow afternoon. Night, Dipper."

"Night." And Dipper hung up.

He turned around to see Pacifica pulling back the covers and climbing into bed. "Seven?"

"Seven. Probably twelve, if you factor in Robbie and the others." He climbed into bed and kissed her goodnight, before turning off the lamp next to his bed and closing his eyes. His eyes flew open a moment later, when a thought occurred to him, something he'd seen on an old TV movie once. One he watched with Pacifica only a few days ago.

"Why do you come here, Pacifica?"

Pacifica stirred against him. "What?" she asked quizzically.

"Why do you come here, Pacifica?" he repeated sternly.

"What kind of a question is-" she began hotly before stopping herself when she realized what she was quoting. "Oh," she said softly. "I come to serve."

"Who do you serve?"

"I serve the truth."

"What is the truth?"

"We are one people, one voice."

"Will you follow me into fire? Will you follow me into darkness? Will you follow me into death?"

"I will," Pacifica responded without a trace of hesitation.

"Then follow," Dipper said softly, snuggling himself against her. Within a few moments, they were both asleep.

Fifteen hours later.

A very full Wendy Corduroy leaned back in her chair at the Pines' dining room table, trying to think through the rapidly oncoming food coma. She wanted to slump down in her chair, but Dipper had promised to explain to all of them the new mystery he'd managed to uncover after Mabel's welcome home dinner.

She couldn't help but smile at that. Life had been very boring in Dipper's absence. Oh, sure he hadn't been entirely gone. They spoke all the time on Skype, and over the phone, but it hadn't been the same and that was the problem. Sure, her life had gone on much the same way it always had prior to Dipper's appearance in her life. Granted, there wasn't a Mystery Shack anymore, but she'd found another job working at the GameStop in the mall. She got up, went to school, went to work on weekends, and dated, all the usual things. And that was the problem. It was all so…ordinary. During those three months in the summer of 2012, she had accomplished something worth doing. Something to be proud of, she'd helped save her hometown, save her country, save Earth, save mankind. After that, an ordinary life seemed poor by comparison

But despite her…frustration with ordinary life, she missed her best friend even more. That more than anything was why she'd decided to apply San Francisco State. It'd be more expensive as an out-of-state student, but she had the scholarships and the financial aid to cover it. It'd be a chance to get away from home, and, be near one of her closest friends. She hated the thought of abandoning her other friend, but when she told them, they'd all decided to apply with her. And to her amazement, they'd all gotten in.

Plus, there was the faint hope, that maybe she could do something meaningful with her life again.

Now, as Dipper closed the dining room door, his parents having gone into the living room to recuperate, she saw the determined, and faintly horrified look on his face. She remembered the moments of stark terror, the moments of despair, at the possibility of watching everything they knew and everything and everyone they loved sink into the abyss.

Be careful what you wish for.

"All right guys," Dipper said, voice pitched loudly enough to be heard clearly by everyone in the room, but hopefully not by his parents. "I know some of you came down here expecting to have fun, get to know the place, and experience the best the Bay Area has to offer. But…circumstances have changed. In the last few months, a new movement among the Bay Area restaurants has cropped up. One that resonates uncomfortably with a certain child psychic that used to be quite popular up in Oregon a few years back."

She and most everyone else in the room chuckled derisively.

"It's called the Epicurean Club. Now it's entirely possible that I'm just being paranoid, but something tells me I'm not…"

"Let me get this straight," Wendy said very slowly and softly when Dipper was done. "You're saying that this Epicurean Club could very well be eating children. Based on a smarmy brochure and a kidnapping that just happened to occur an hour after you read it."

"I don't know what I'm suggesting, Wendy," Dipper responded tartly, leaning forward across the table "All I know is that both things have…a wrong shape to them. One, this Epicurean Club seems to have expanded way too fast."

"Maybe they just serve really good food at these meetings?" Robbie pointed out from where he was sitting with Tambry across from her at the table.

"Perhaps," Dipper conceded, "and that's why I hope to God I'm wrong. Both because I don't like the idea that anyone could be that depraved, and I don't want my Mom to get mixed up in something like that. But the kidnapping of Jessica Ocampo also doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense either."

"How so?" Wendy asked.

"I don't want to be blunt," Dipper began, looking apologetically at his friend across the table, "Especially when it comes to your sister, Melanie. However, most of the time when you have a child abduction case, or any sort of kidnapping at all, the abductors number at most one or two people who have some sort of personal or familial connection to the victim. It's not usually four people wearing ski masks and driving an unmarked car. What's more sexual predators, which contrary to media hype, are the rarest kidnappers of children; usually abandon the attempt if they encounter any sort of significant resistance. Mabel, Candy, and Grenda engaged the kidnappers immediately on hearing Jessica's screams. Instead of retreating, they stayed and actually fought them until they could secure her and get out of there. Her family has no money and no political or social influence of the kind that would make running that sort of risk worthwhile. Also, there's been no ransom demand, no demands of any kind in fact. There are exceptions to that rule, of course, and leaving aside the still horrifying possibility of these being unusually persistent sexual predators, the odds are overwhelming in favor of them being after her for some ulterior reason."

No one in the room made a sound after that, as everyone there digested the fact that Dipper's reasoning, at least when it came to the kidnapping, made sense. But Wendy, the girl who grew up hunting with her lumberjack family, realized something else.

"You're logic is sound, Dipper," Wendy said a moment later, feeling faintly stick to her stomach. "Yes, predators, both the human variety and in the animal kingdom, will usually back down if they encounter significant resistance. Except, in the case of animals, when food is scarce, and they're starving. Now, if your mother's restaurant has joined the Epicurean Club, and if what you're suggesting is true, then they're going to…" she sighed, trying to find the strength to voice the single most disgusting thought that she'd ever had. "Going to need more. Kids." She felt her gorge rise in her throat.

Melanie however, was the one who shot up from the table and barreled upstairs towards the bathroom. Wendy, and everyone else at the table winced with a mixture of disgust and sympathy at the sound of retching that filtered back down the stairs.

After a few moments, a somewhat paler, looking Melanie came slowly, trembling down the stairs before sitting back in her chair.

"You all right?" Pacifica asked from her position to Dipper's right.

"I'm fine," Melanie said, nodding. She looked over at Dipper. "Continue, if you must."

Dipper stared at her sympathetically. "The simple fact remains that we have no leads one way or another on her kidnapping. We have no choice but to investigate the Epicurean Club and hope that it either connects to her kidnapping or we get some sort of significant lead on that from some other quarter."

"So what do we do?" Wendy asked after a moment, fearing that maybe she hadn't seen the worst of human nature during the Gravity Falls crisis. But there was determination there to, if there was something to be afraid of here, to put a stop to it, whatever it was.

"We investigate. We talk to some of the club's members, we look into the histories of the restaurants that have the Epicurean Club sticker in their windows. And we dig into the background of this Thomas Salvatore. The Board of Big Mysteries has been cleared and set up in my room. Anything of significance, we find goes on there. Tomorrow we get to work. I hope I'm just being paranoid about the Epicurean Club and it's link to this kidnapping. And that if I am being paranoid, we run across some lead to Jessica's whereabouts over the course of this investigation."

"And if you're not," Melanie said, still sounding weak, and utterly terrified that her worst nightmares over the last day didn't even approach the half of the truth. "Being paranoid, I mean."

"Then we put a stop to it," Dipper said visibly, swallowing a lump in his throat. "One way or another. And God help us all."